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SERMONS 



PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD 



LONDON 

PRINTED ET SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. 
MTEW-STREET SQUARE 



SCIENCE IN THEOLOGY 



SERMONS 



PREACHED IN ST. MARY'S, OXFORD 



BEFOEE THE UNIVERSITY 



rA 



BY ADAM S. FABBAB, M.A. F.G.S. F.B.A.S. 

MICHEL FELLOW OF QUEER'S COLLE&E, OXFOED ; LATE ONE OF THE SELECT PEEACHEES 
TO THE TJiaVEESITY ; AND PBEACHEK AT THE CHAPEL EOXAL, WHITEHALL 



LONDON 

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMABLE STBEET 

1859 



PREFACE. 



The title, " Science in Theology," is intended to 
express the writer's purpose in the composition of the 
following Sermons, viz. to bring some of the discoveries 
and methods of the Physical and Moral Sciences to 
bear upon theoretic questions of Theology. 

The history of the growth of systematic theology on 
the one hand, and of religious scepticism on the other, 
exhibits marked traces of the constant presence of 
an element which may be called Science in Theology. 
From the time that Theology first arose out of 
Religion, the speculative theory out of the practical 
art, it has never failed to receive a tinge from the 
condition of general knowledge existing, and the 
methods for the investigation of truth prevalent, in 
each particular age. Itself a kind of science — so 
far as systematic arrangement of principles can con- 
stitute science — it has shared the fate of the other 
sciences ; it has been compelled to take its place 
among them, and has met with opposition, or has 



vi 



PREFACE. 



received illustration from them. Its history is marked 
by epochs of criticism or of scepticism, in which it 
has had to submit to the investigations of co-ordinate 
bodies of Physical or Mental Philosophy, sometimes 
refuting them, sometimes borrowing from them, at 
other times surrendering to them. In each of these 
epochs the difficulties presented have been grounded 
in some form of Science or Philosophy which has 
been brought to bear upon Christian Theology ; in 
each of them the restoration or the perpetuation of 
Christian belief has depended upon the re-adjustment 
of the new form of thought with the claims of pre- 
existent religious dogmas. The battle has been 
metaphysical or scientific, not strictly theological. 
It has been fought in reference to the premises from 
which the sceptics or critics have started, not to the 
conclusions at which they have arrived. 

In the early centuries, for example, Theology 
received a tinge from contact with the allegorising 
philosophy of Alexandria, which expressed itself in 
the writings of Origen. That learned man could not 
lay aside his favourite habits of thought, but strove 
to adjust Christian speculations to them. During 
the two centuries which followed his time, Theology 
came into conflict with the Neo-Platonic philosophy 1 , 



1 See Sermon V. (pp. 150 — 155) of this volume. 



PREFACE. 



vii 



and in the conflict came forth victorious from the 
first great historical epoch of scepticism. In the 
middle ages it encountered a new danger, a second 
crisis, from the criticism of Nominalists' like Abelard, 
in the University of Paris 1 ; and it received a new 
adjustment with the existing state of thought through 
means of the logical arrangements of the Schoolmen, 
such as Anselm and Aquinas. 2 At the era of the 
Eenaissance it encountered new difficulties in being 
brought into contact with the wider knowledge which 
Providence, from time to time, disclosed to mankind 
— difficulties which have not, like the more ancient 
ones previously noticed, quickly expired, but have 
left their effects to the present day. The sacred books 
were then, for the first time, exposed to the criticism 
of great scholars and editors, and alarm was excited 
by the discovery of variety of readings in the text. 
Received dogmas also were submitted to the acute 
controversies generated by the Eeformation, and 
while undergoing revision from that movement the 
terminology in which they were expressed became 
stereotyped in the mode that might be expected from 
an era of religious struggle. 3 In the early part of 

1 See Sir J. Stephen's "Lectures on the History of France" 
(vol. ii. first Lecture on the Power of the Pen). 

2 See Sermon VI. pp. 187, 188. 

3 It was an age when theologians had not time for careful 
thought, even if the state of scholarship had been sufficiently 



Vlll 



PREFACE. 



the seventeenth century the discoveries in Physical 
Science also began to unveil new truths to the minds 
of the orthodox. Metaphysical Science likewise, in 
opening up investigations into the origin of know- 
ledge, led through the spread of Sensationalism to a 
new, the third, epoch of religious scepticism, which 
is generally identified with the name of Yoltaire and 
the cotemporary philosophers of France. It is un- 
necessary to point out the intellectual and moral 
means by which Theological Science outlived this 
new crisis. The battle was again fought on Scientific 

advanced to supply them with the materials for it. This, how- 
ever, was not the case. In the world of scholars there were 
indeed giants in those days — Erasmus, Budaeus, the Stephenses, 
the Scaligers, &c, — but their attention was devoted mainly to 
words. The scholars of the seventeenth century applied them- 
selves rather to things. On the foundation thus prepared, the 
German scholars of the last and present century have been able 
to found accurate sciences of language and of criticism. While, 
therefore, we justly render all honour to the noble efforts of the 
theologians of the era of the Reformation, we ought not to sup- 
pose that they, with their imperfect attainments, were infallible 
interpreters of the sacred Scriptures, nor to allow their views to 
be an impediment to the theological progress which Providence 
is forcing on the world by the advance in knowledge, to a 
portion of which allusion has been made. The stand-point of 
the sixteenth century had its value; it was a noble protest 
against mediaeval Christianity, an epoch in spiritual emancipa- 
tion ; but it was not the same as the stand-point of the first 
century, and for this reason, as well as for the others just named, 
it is not sufficiently broad and simple and learned to be the stand- 
point of the nineteenth. 



PREFACE. 



ix 



ground, not on Theological. Lastly, the convergence 
of different lines of thought in the present day ; of 
the Intellectualism of Germany 1 and the Positivism of 
France ; of religious dogmatism and scientific scepti- 
cism ; and the existence of apparent discrepancies 
between Theology and the Sciences, are producing a 
fresh era of criticism, a fresh crisis of doubt. Theology 
must again listen to secular discoveries, must refute 
them or re-adjust its doctrines and its methods to 
them ; and the humblest attempts made without 
sophistry, in an honest and loving temper, to aid in 
such a desirable result must surely be useful. 

The history thus given of Science in Theology, i. e. 
of the relation which Science, Physical and Mental, 
has held to Theology, will explain clearly the meaning 
of the writer of these pages. The following sermons 
can only be regarded - as detached contributions, 
aiming to show the mode in which the Theology of 
the present day may incorporate the irrefragable 
discoveries of modern science into its own system. 
They will have performed their office if (with the 
assistance of the hints offered in the foot-notes) they 
are the means, by God's blessing, of suggesting 
materials for reflection to thoughtful and religious 

1 This term is intended to include the Spiritualist tendencies 
of the followers of Schclling, as well as the Rationalist followers 
of Kant and Hegel. 



X 



PREFACE. 



minds. They are published in deference to the 
wishes of very many persons who made the request 
at the times when they were respectively preached. 1 
The topic thus indicated offers abundant field for 
investigation to those theological students who desire 
to aid in removing the difficulties which many 
educated men in the present day feel in reference 
to our holy religion. It may possibly assist their 
studies to specify the six following branches of 
inquiry which still, perhaps, require farther treat- 
ment 2 : — 

First : The relations of metaphysical science to 
religion demand an investigation of the limits which 
the structure of the human mind imposes in refer- 
ence to theological speculation. 

Secondly : A comparison is needed between the 
statements of the sacred inspired books of the Jews 
and the modern discoveries of comparative Philology 

1 They are arranged according to the internal connexion of 
subject rather than the chronological order of delivery. In 
order to complete the series, one Sermon has been added which 
was preached at Whitehall, but some parts of it were contained 
in a Sermon (not published) preached before the University. 

2 The above remarks, with some of those which immediately 
follow, express the substance of an unpublished Sermon, on " The 
Epochs of Religious Scepticism," preached by the Author before 
the University on St. Thomas's Day, 1855. It is for the use of 
those who requested the publication of it that they have been 
introduced in this preface. 



PREFACE. 



xi 



and Mythology, and of historic data derivable from 
recently excavated inscriptions. 

Thirdly : A discussion of the relations of the 
Physical Sciences to the evidences of Natural Religion 
and to the doctrines and inspiration of Revealed. 

Fourthly : An examination of the various books of 
the Holy Scriptures as works of literature of the ages 
in which the authors of them lived. 1 

Fifthly : A history of the Science of Theology and 
of the growth of Theological opinions. 

Sixthly : A candid, reverent, and loving examina- 
tion of the light which these various branches of 
inquiry throw on the proof, nature, and limits of 
Inspiration. 

It is gratifying to think that many works of great 
importance have recently appeared in reference to 
most of these lines of inquiry. 2 The writer may 

1 In a manner, for example, analogous to C. 0. Miiller's " His- 
tory of the early Literature of Greece." The literature of the 
Jews, their early poetry, and eloquence, and chronicles, and 
proverbs, possesses, like that of Greece, the value of being an 
original and (so to say) indigenous literature. It has, therefore, 
the special claims for psychological study which only belong to 
those literatures which we have reason to regard as original 
utterances of the human intelligence, and expressions of national 
life and modes of thought. Such an investigation is a necessary 
preliminary to a right comprehension of the distinctive, inspired, 
and supernatural element which enters into the Jewish literature. 

2 The first of these subjects, for example, has been recently 
treated by Mr. Mansel in his Bampton Lectures, and by Mr. 



xii 



PREFACE. 



perhaps be permitted to state that he hopes here- 
after to discuss the third and sixth of them, towards 
which his studies, conducted in the retirement of 
an Oxford cloister, have through several years been 
made to converge. 

Maurice in his reply, " What is Revelation ?"; the second by Mr. 
Rawlinson, in the Bampton Lectures for 1859 ; the third by 
Prof. Baden Powell ; the fourth by Ewald ; the fifth partially by 
Baur and Bishop Hampden ; (also the instructive writings of 
Professors Stanley and J owett, and the matchless sermons of the 
lamented F. W. Robertson supply many very valuable hints in 
reference both to this topic and to the one last mentioned) ; the 
sixth by Dr. Lee, by Mr. Morell in his " Philosophy of Religion," 
and by Dean Harvey Goodwin in two of his Hulsean Lectures. 
The above works are only a few of those which have appeared. 
A rich mine, almost unworked, of novel and most suggestive 
thought exists in the modern theological literature of Germany 
for any one who can separate the pure metal from the dross. In 
naming these works the writer does not by any means intend 
indiscriminate praise or acquiescence. He bestows his praises 
as a student, not as a theologian ; the difference being that a 
student usually praises a work if he finds it suggestive of thought 
and instruction ; while a theologian too often withholds his com- 
mendations if he finds the sentiments disagree with his pre- 
conceived opinions, i. e. (to use Lord Bacon's caustic expression) 
with the idols of his own den. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



SERMON I. 

THE GRADUAL DISCOVERY OF THE DIVINE ATTRIBUTES 
THROUGH SCRIPTURE AND SCIENCE. 

Isaiah Ivii. 15. 

The historic method of studying the development of theological opinions 
applied to trace the knowledge of the Divine attributes derivable 
through — L Reason, II. Revelation, III. Science. — I. Distinction 
between the origin of the idea of God and the origin of the idea of His 
attributes. — The three theories on the former ; the successive efforts 
of the Greek philosophers (Thales, Anaxagoras, Plato, Aristotle) in 
reference to the latter. — II. Views of God's attributes gradually un- 
folded in the successive stages of Revelation, as shown in the thoughts 
of Moses, David, Isaiah, and in Christianity. — III. Science regarded 
as a new and additional revelation, given without miracle, through 
uninspired genius. — Knowledge of the Divine attributes unfolded by 
means of it, e.g. through Astronomy, through the telescope and 
microscope, through Geology, Mathematics, Moral Science. — In- 
ferences ------ Page 1 

Note, On the Theological Ideas of some early Greek Philosophers - 35 



SERMON II. 
DIVINE PROVIDENCE IN GENERAL LAWS. 
Acts xvii. 28. 



Description of Athens in the time of St. Paul, and of the Epicurean and 
Stoic theories of Providence. — Statement of causes which have pro- 



xiv 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



duced sceptical theories on Providence in succeeding ages, viz. the 
speculations of Metaphysicians and the real discoveries of general laws 
through Natural Science and through Statistics. — The object of the 
Sermon stated to be (I.) the discussion of the scientific discoveries in 
reference to the invariability of Nature's laws, and (II.) the reconcilia- 
tion of such a view of Providence with the idea of benevolence in God. 
— I. Illustrations of the fixity of Nature's laws in the example of, 
(a) earthquakes (e. g. that of Lisbon) and, (/3) in colliery explosions. 
— Proof that such catastrophes are not explicable as judgments for sin, 
both from our Lord's teaching and from the Geological discovery of 
the existence of pain and death antecedent to human history. — Further 
exemplification of the invariability of Nature's laws in, (y) the permis- 
sion of historical and political catastrophes like the Indian rebellion of 
1857. — Theory of such events. — II. Reconciliation of the Divine 
government by general laws, which has thus been proved, with the 
idea of benevolence in God's character. — The " greatest happiness " 
principle applied to this subject. — Illustration from Lagrange's dis- 
coveries in Mathematical Astronomy. — Remarks on the apparently 
contradictory doctrine of Special Providence taught in Scripture as 
equally real with the Providence taught in science - Page 37 

Note, On Special Providence - - - - - 71 

SERMON III. 

DIVINE BENEVOLENCE IN THE ECONOMY OF PAIN. 
Genesis xlvii. 8, 9. 

Description of the Egypt of the age of Jacob, and of Jacob's melancholy 
view of human life. — Subject of the Sermon stated to be the Theory 
of Pain, i. e. the reconciliation of the existence of pain with the attri- 
bute of benevolence in the Creator (I.) in the purpose of its adminis- 
tration, and (II.) in the remedies provided for its diminution. — 
I. Discussion of, (a) the pain which can be clearly shown to be correc- 
tive, not retributive; with illustrations on this subject from the 
Geological discovery that pain existed antecedently to human history, 
and therefore antecedently to human sin. (Examination, in a foot- 
note, of the alleged discrepancy between this discovery and the teach- 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



XV 



ing of Holy Scripture.) ((3) The pain which arises from accidents and 
from the operation of general laws, which is equally proved in the 
large scale to be compatible with the Divine benevolence. — II. Fur- 
ther proofs of God's kindness shown in the remedies provided by 
Providence, (1) in the growth of medical science, (2) in the growth of 
public opinion and sympathy, (3) in the philanthropy awakened by 
civilisation and Christianity. — Lessons recently taught on the import- 
ance of attention to the secular aspect of religion - Page 73 

Note, On the Evidence of Geology, designed to refute some objections 
taken against the science - - - - -101 

SERMON IV. 

JEWISH INTERPRETATION OF PROPHECY. 
Isaiah vi. 9. 

The pertinacity of the Jewish national character shown to be a cause 
which has impeded attempts made for their civilisation or conversion. 

— Object of the Sermon explained to be, (I.) a sketch of the history of 
Jewish uninspired theological literature, and (II.) the statement of the 
principal lines of argument used in the discussion between Jews and 
Christians. — I. Their theological literature studied in three epochs : — 
1. From their captivity to the Christian era. — Effects of the captivity 
on the Jewish national character and position, with the causes which 
created that branch of literature called the Targums ; 2. From the 
3rd to the 8th century a.d. — Sketch of the two centres of Jewish life 
in Galilee and Mesopotamia. — The school of Biblical criticism creates 
the Masora, and that of Biblical interpretation produces the two parts 
of the Talmud, the Mishna and the Gemara; 3. From the 10th to the 
15th century in Spain. — The literary condition of the Jews in Spain. 
Schools of theological interpretation, e. g. Jarchi, Aben Ezra, Kimchi, 
and of philosophical theology, e. g. Maimonides. — Subsequent writers, 
Abarbanel and Rabbin Isaac. — IL The controversy between Jew 
and Christian shown to depend upon interpretation of prophecies. 

— The tests of true interpretation resolve themselves into a question 
of circumstantial evidence. — Three lines of objection urged by the 
Jews against Christianity considered and refuted: — 1. The historical 



XVL 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



and popular one, that Christianity was rejected by cotemporary inves- 
tigators ; 2. The philosophical one of Maimonides, that an incarnation 
of God is impossible, and contrary to the analogy of the old Hebrew 
religion; 3. The critical one, of the Spanish school of Jewish inter- 
preters, that the Messianic prophecies are misinterpreted by Christians. 

— Remarks on the need of a more correct system in prophetic inter- 
pretation. — Concluding inferences - Page 103 

SERMON V. 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY TRINITY. 

Ephesians ii. 18. 

Peculiarity of the doctrine, among all others in Christianity, in depending 
for its proof entirely on revelation. — The practical statements of 
Scripture in relation to it contrasted with the theoretic terms of Creeds. 

— I. History of controversy in reference to the doctrine:— 1. In the 
Greek university of Alexandria. — Sketch of the Neo-Platonic philo- 
sophy, first as a metaphysical, secondly a political, thirdly a logical 
movement ; and its relation to the doctrine of the Trinity ; 2. In the 
rise of Socinianism in the 16th century; 3. In the philosophical 
systems of modern Germany and of Coleridge. — II. The doctrine 
which is really to be believed as the residuum after the theories which 
have encrusted the inspired teaching are removed. — The idea of ■per- 
sonality shown to be derived from human analogy, but to convey a 
true fact. — The influence of science shown in creating a moral dispo- 
sition to believe mystery if it rest on evidence. — Practical in- 
ferences - - - - - - -145 

SERMON VI. 
THE ATONEMENT. 
Mark ix. 2. 

The Transfiguration studied: — 1. In its geographical scene; 2. In its 
moral meaning. — The fact that our Saviour's teaching entirely changed 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



XVll 



from this event (for previously to it he had not proclaimed the fact 
that he was to suffer) used as a proof that the Transfiguration had a 
real meaning in reference to our Lord, and was not merely a parable 
acted to instruct the disciples. — (Illustrations of similar mystery beyond 
their moral meaning to us in our Lord's Temptation and Agony.) — 
Statement of the modern theories on the purpose of our Lord's suffer- 
ing, and also of the Apostolic teaching in reference to it. — The 
subject of the Atonement the chief purpose of this Sermon. — I. An 
historic sketch of the successive theories on the Atonement from the 
Apostolic times : — (a) the Patristic to a.d. 1000, which taught that it 
was to ransom man from the Devil (the view, e. g. of Gregory the 
Great); (3) the Scholastic (a.d. 1000—1500), that it was a satisfac- 
tion rendered to a broken law, either by the life of Christ (Anselm's 
view) or the death of Christ (Aquinas') ; (y) the Protestant view (of 
the Reformers and Grotius, a.d. 1500 — 1700), that it was a satisfac- 
tion for sin viewed under the corrective, as distinct from the retributive, 
theory of punishment ; (o) the view of modern German philosophers, 
that it was only to reconcile man to God, not God to man. — II. 
Refutation of the first three views, as going beyond inspired teaching, 
and constructed in forgetfulness of the proofs which Physical science 
gives of the poverty of human intelligence, and Mental science of the 
extent to which analogy is the medium of revealed truth.— III. Hints 
for the refutation of the fourth view, as falling short of the truth. — 
Criticism on other modes adopted for refuting this fourth view, such 
as the ordinary one and Mr. Mansel's. — Another suggested, resting 
on the idea of guilt and the fact of sacrifice. — Conclusion as to the 
reality of Christ's death being a true but undiscoverable means of 
reconciling (so to say) God to man, as well as man to God. Page 169 

SERMON VII. 
LAWS IN THE LIFE SPIRITUAL. 
2 Timothy iv. 7. 

Statement of the three forms of human life, the practical, the intellectual, 
and the spiritual. — St. Paul's character studied as an harmonious 
embodiment of them all ; and his influence estimated at different 

a 



xvni 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



periods of church history in awakening theological speculation and 
stimulating religious effort. — The religious life studied as follows: — 
I. Is it subject to fixed laws ? Three opinions stated ; (a) that which 
resolves it into ordinary processes of moral psychology (Butler's view) ; 
((B) that which makes it dependent on Divine election (Calvin's) ; 
(y) that which makes it exist in a faculty transcending consciousness 
(Schleiermacher's). — II. Are its laws discoverable? — III. By what 
means? By induction from inspired and uninspired religious bio- 
graphy. — Enumeration of tests applicable to ensure correctness in 
such discovery. — IV. Laws of religious life derivable from St. Paul's 
life, in reference to conversion, assurance, salvation in death. Page 203 

SERMON VIII. 
THE GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST. 
John xiv. 16. 

The miracle of the descent of the Spirit compared with the miracles of 
Creation and of Redemption. — Four great gifts of the Spirit to be 
studied : — I. Miracle. — The comparison of Christianity with Boodhism 
and Mahometanism an evidence of the reality of ancient Christian 
miracles. — Reason of their disappearance. — II. Inspiration. — How 
far it was, like Miracle, a temporary gift. — III. Holiness — studied in 
apostolic Christians and in the history of the religious consciousness — 
shown to be a gift for all time. — IV. Supernatural religious useful- 
ness. — In what sense perpetual. — Illustrations from history of reli- 
gious reawakenings in later times, e. g> the ministry of Francis of Assisi, 
Methodism, the Rev. C. Simeon, &c. - 234 

SERMON IX. 

PROVIDENCE IN POLITICAL REVOLUTIONS. 

Proverbs xvi. 4. 

Discussion of the Oriental (apparently fatalistic) modes of expression in 
Scripture. — Instances of good brought by Providence out of evil, 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



xix 



(a) in Jewish, (/3) in general, history. — Application of this principle 
to the English Revolution in the reign of Charles I., in the form of a 
proof that Providence overrules national convulsions to ultimate good 
by a law which is impressed on society. — The relation of this argu- 
ment shown to the evidence of beneficence in the Divine character. — 
1. Political convulsions overruled for good in producing the material 
welfare of man, the advancement of liberty. — The causes of revolution 
explained, and their application to the example of the English Revolu- 
tion by detailed reference to the history. — 2. Their influence on the 
moral discipline and instruction of nations. — Concluding infe- 
rences ------- Page 260 

Note, On the Scene of the Execution of Charles I. 288 



ERRATA. 



105, line 2, for "seraphim " read a seraph." 
109, line 8, for " centuries a.d." read "century A.i 
111, line 15, for " depositary" read " depository." 



ADDENDA to the NOTES. 



Sermon I. (pp. 13 — 23.) It will be observed that no reference is 
made in this Sermon to the modern German discussion concerning the 
authorship, integrity, and date of the books of the Hebrew Canon here 
quoted. Such criticisms were, partly unknown to the writer at the time 
when the Sermon was composed (1855) ; but they do not so much affect 
the question here discussed concerning the conceptions to which the Jews 
attained about God as the respective dates at which those conceptions 
became known. The view taken in the Sermon, being the one prevalent 
in England, supposes the general integrity of the Masoretic Canon, and 
assumes also that the different conceptions of Deity, commonly called the 
Elohistic and Jehovistic, related more to difference of thought than of 
time, — not being so much restricted to particular epochs of Jewish lite- 
rature, but rather marking respectively different aspects of belief, — the 
priestly and the prophetic, the ethnic and the revealed. (The reference, 
however, in p. 21, of the authorship of the 139th Psalm to David on the 
strength of its title is most probably erroneous, on account of the 
Aramaisms which it contains.) This interesting subject of the Jewish 
names for Deity may be studied in Hengstenberg's " Authentic des 
Pentateuches " (vol. i.) ; De Wette's " Introduction to the Old Testa- 
ment " (Eng. Trans., Part III. B. 1. ch. 1) ; Keil's " Lehrbuch" (p. 82) ; 
and Donaldson's "Christian Orthodoxy" (Appendix III.). 

Sermon IV. P. 120 note, line 2, for " after " read " about," and for 
" 50 " read " 40." 

Pp. 124 et seq. The integrity of the writings of Isaiah, Zechariah, and 
the other prophets is here assumed without discussion, as it is not one of 
the questions in dispute with the Jewish interpreters. The Christology 
of the Old Testament, to which allusion is made in this Sermon, may be 
studied in Hengstenberg's work on the subject. 

Sermon V., p. 152, line 11. Probably, however, Philo did not stand 
alone, but was merely one of a school, of which the other writers are now 
lost. 

Pp. 155 (last line but one). For " western France" read "southern." 



b 



SERMONS 



SERMON I. 

THE GRADUAL DISCOVERY OF THE DIVINE ATTRIBUTES 
THROUGH SCRIPTURE AND SCIENCE. 

(Preached before the University, March 4th, 1855.) 
♦ 

Isaiah lvii. 15. 

Thus saith the high and lofty One that inliabiteth 
eternity, whose name is Holy ; I dwell in the high 
and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite 
and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, 
and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. 

In these words the prophet combines the majesty of 
God with His mercy, the magnificence of His infi- 
nite power with the tenderness of His unbounded 
condescension. It is this combination of attributes 
which men are apt to regard as almost incredible, — 
that He who inhabiteth eternity can yet dwell with a 

B 



2 



OX DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. 



SEEM. X. 



being so inconsiderable as man. If you tell them 
of the greatness of God's nature, they think it 
impossible that He can concern Himself with re- 
viving the spirit of the humble ; or inform them that 
He stoops to dwell in the heart of the contrite, 
they can hardly imagine that He is the high and lofty 
One who inhabiteth eternity. If the Deity be ex- 
hibited as busied with what they deem insignificant, 
their inference is that He cannot be attentive to 
what is vast ; or if He be represented as occupied 
with what is great, there is an immediate apprehen- 
sion that the minute must escape His observation. 

Nor is this disposition to separate the properties 
which the prophet combines more observable than 
the variation which it has undergone in different 
ages and under different circumstances. The pro- 
gress, or alteration, which takes place in human 
opinions and belief is, though less observed, as real 
as that which occurs in the world of events. A rise 
and fall of empires is as truly going forward in the 
intellectual as in the historical world. Nor can 
there be a more instructive mode of viewing a truth 
than by showing the fluctuation of human thought 
in relation to it. 1 Thus in reference to the present 
doctrine, there have been ages of the world when 

1 It is probable that the sole permanent contribution to know- 
ledge which the philosophy of Hegel will be found to have made, 
will be in its creation of the historic method of studying opinions, — 



serm. r. 



OX DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. 



3 



those who held fast their faith (imperfect though it 
was) in Providence, have failed to ascend to the idea 
of a Being of infinite greatness, while those, on the 
other hand, on whose minds speculation had forced 
the conviction of man's unmeasured inferiority, have 
doubted that an unwearied Providence could be en- 
gaged on his behalf. 1 And, in the present age, it 
is often found that those who believe in a special 
Providence on the authority of Scripture, do not 
understand that general Providence which is estab- 
lished by the evidence of science ; or, that conversely 
insisting upon the administration of the universe by 
a system of general laws, they fail to reconcile it 
with the revealed account of God's interposition by 
miracles and special Providence. 

It will not, therefore, I should hope, be an un- 
profitable employment if we trace by what means 
and with what degree of increasing evidence the 
two doctrines of the greatness of the Divine attri- 
butes and His condescending mercy have been made 
known to man; and, afterwards, attempt briefly to 
deduce from the subject lessons for our religious 
improvement. 

a method which was in his system a necessity arising from his 
point of view, but which is worthy of imitation by those who 
differ from his motives and principles. 

1 These doubts marked the philosophy of the early part of the 
last century which followed on the great discoveries which Newton 
had made in the preceding age. Pope's "Essay on Man" gives 
expression to such doubts, borrowed probably from Bolingbroke. 



4 



ON DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. 



SEEM. I. 



There are three means by which men have been 
made the recipients of ideas concerning the Divine 
Being, and the relations which He sustains towards 
us, viz. : Reason, Revelation, and Science. 1 
Let us try to discover what assistance these re- 
spective sources have contributed towards the 
comprehension of the two doctrines which we are 
studying. 

1. When we point to Reason as one source from 
which man has learned the greatness or the con- 
descension of God, we do not intend to express 
any opinion on the question whether the first idea 
of a Divine Being was extracted by the mere light 
of natural reason or was a direct gift of reve- 
lation. The question which concerns us is not as 
to the means by which men first came to learn 
the idea of God, but rather the process through 
which when that idea was already present, they 
first attained to a conception of His infinity. The 
inquiry into the origin of the idea will always be 
a matter of uncertainty, inasmuch as it belongs 
to that class of questions which concern the 
first origin of things, such, for example, as those 
which treat of the origin of matter, or life, or 
language, or society, — questions which not only re- 
late to facts anterior, to the dawn of history, but 

1 By the term "Reason," is here meant metaphysical specula- 
tion ; and by " Science," modern inductive discoveries. 



serm. r. 



ON DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. 



for the explanation of which man hardly possesses 
the faculties. 1 Hence there will doubtless always 
be distinct opinions on the inquiry. Some 2 , who 
conceive that man is at his birth intellectually a 
blank, will suppose that he learns the idea gradually 
by experience and observation; others 3 , supposing 
themselves unable by such a process to explain 
how the world became furnished, at the very earliest 
and most rudimentary periods of its history, with 
an idea which would appear rather to be the dis- 
covery (if discovery at all) of cultivated powers, 
have thought that the human mind is not ushered 
into the world a blank, but is furnished with a small 
stock, as it were, of rational principles, from which 
germinates the variety of knowledge which forms 
the mental inheritance of man. Others 4 , again, on 
the ground both of philosophy and of Scripture, de- 
cline to resign their belief that the ideas of God and 
of duty were originally imparted by direct revelation 
from heaven ; conceiving that as a savage race when 

1 The distinction here designed is neatly expressed by Chalmers 
(Introduction to his "Bridgewater Treatise") as that which exists 
between the " collocations of matter " and the " laws of nature." 
Modern science is content to restrict itself to the latter of 
these two branches of inquiry, and to leave the former to 
metaphysicians. 

2 The sensational school of philosophers. 

3 The idealist school. 

4 Locke may be perhaps taken as a type of this view (" Essay 
on Human Understanding," b. iv.). 



6 



ON DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. 



SERM. I. 



sunk below a certain stage of barbarism can never 
rescue itself from its degradation without being 
raised out of it by means of external agency, so 
the race of man could never have taken the first 
step in religious knowledge if Providence had not 
communicated to it the rudiments. 

But whichever of these views you may adopt as to 
the origin of the idea of God, it must ever be an 
important inquiry to discover how much mankind 
can learn or have learned of God and of the relation 
which He bears to us, without the aid of further revela- 
tion than the primitive one which lighteth every man 
that cometh into the world. The study of natural 
religion (as such inquiry is called) not only thus 
affords a valuable and independent support to the 
truths which revelation asserts, but also enables us 
to see what were the limits within which that which 
may be known of God had been manifested to men, 
which an Apostle 1 thought left them without 
excuse. Above all, the contrast of that darkness 
amid which they attempted to grope their way to 
truth, will prepare us for seeing the noonday bright- 
ness which has been thrown over these doctrines in 
the later ages of the world. 

It fortunately happens that we need not enter 
into any speculations on this question, for history 
supplies an instance of a nation where a natural 
1 Rom. i. 20. 



serm. i. ON DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. 7 

religion was actually created by the light of reason, 
or where, possibly, to speak more truly, the fragment 
of truth which formed the last relic of an earlier 
faith was matured and developed into greater purity. 
The philosophers of Greece worked out a natural 
theology. 

It was hardly, indeed, to be expected that such a 
subject would be overlooked by that people which 
stands conspicuous above all others of ancient or 
modern time for the natural gift of commanding 
intellectual faculties, and the power to appreciate 
the true and the beautiful ; whose influence, unlike 
that of other nations, has been greater since its 
decline than when flourishing in greatness, and whose 
writers, as long as mankind can appreciate through 
the medium of an unrivalled language, the brilliancy 
of unrivalled thoughts, will continue to hold (as 
they have ever held) the same position in relation to 
civilisation which the Jewish nation has sustained 
in relation to the growth of religion. Yet the very 
process by which the writers of that acute people 
discovered their natural theology, no less than the 
results at which they arrived by it, afford the best 
evidence both of the difficulty of the inquiry and the 
value of a divine revelation. By successive steps, 
and after long intervals of time, one and another 
notion was added to develope into a clear conception 
their idea of the Divine Being. We cannot, perhaps, 

Ti 4 



8 



ON DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. 



SERM. I. 



find a more comprehensive view of the opinions at 
which they had arrived in the maturity of thought, 
than that which is contained in a brief passage of 
one of their most brilliant writers, who, in the 
fourth century before Christ, unfolded his own view 
of the Divine Being, and borrowed from his pre- 
decessors those elements which they had respectively 
supplied. " The great first cause," Plato teaches, 
" is endowed with life, with intelligence, with 
goodness." 1 Of the properties which are stated in 
this noble conception of the Divine Being, the 
last alone is his own discovery. When he thus 
wrote two centuries had elapsed from the time when 
the question had been first proposed, and it will be 
instructive to remark the mode in which the inquiry 
had been from time to time suspended, and the 
periods at which the* elements in the answer of it 
were respectively furnished. 2 

It was towards the end of the seventh century, 
before the Christian era, at a time when continental 

1 ejji\pvxoQ,evvovg,ayad6Q.(Fla,to,Ph[leh.]y.30.) To this enumera- 
tion ought to be added the attributes given in Plato's " Republic" 
(b. ii.), viz. "the cause of goodness," "unchanged" by external 
agencies, " unchanging " from internal. 

2 The writer of this Sermon wishes to state, that more careful 
study of Greek philosophy, during the four years since the Ser- 
mon was preached, has convinced him that he has here over- 
estimated the amount of theological speculation which existed 
among the early Greek thinkers. He accordingly now adds a 
note at the end of the Sermon, to correct some points stated in 
the text. 



serm. i. ON DIYINE ATTRIBUTES. 

Greece had not emerged from her early barbarism, 
that the Greek colonies which fringed the shores of 
Asia Minor and of Southern Italy attained that state 
of material civilisation in which superior minds are 
able to devote their leisure to speculation. 1 It was 
then that the series of inquiries commenced, often 
daring, more often ineffectual, into the causes of the 
physical and moral world which has formed the 
noblest occupation of the mind from that time to 
the present. We are apt, as we look back upon 
that period, to undervalue the step which society 
then took. The discoveries, as they were called, 
which were then made, seem to us so rudimentary 
or so unreal, that we are in danger of misunder- 
standing the reach of thought which was necessary 
to attain even to them. 2 It was then that society 
was passing through one of those changes which 
mark the intellectual growth of every nation. It 
was awakening from a state of blind superstition 
to one of reflection. We may understand it by 

1 For the study of this flourishing period in the Greek colo- 
nies, see G-rote's " History of Greece," iii. ch. 22 ; and Thirlwall, ii. 
ch. 12. 

2 The advance of thought which Thales shows beyond his 
predecessors may be illustrated by the transition which Comte 
points out from the theological to the metaphysical, of the three 
stages through which he supposed that knowledge passed. Thales 
attained the idea of cause and of unity of cause. Measured by 
the fetish-like conception of power which existed antecedently, 
some progress may be seen even in these crude notions. 



10 



ON DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. 



SERM. I. 



comparing it with the resurrection of the mind of 
Europe in the eleventh century of the Christian 
era, from the intellectual death which had passed 
alike over civilisation and religion after the fall 
of the Koman Empire. The contrast is not more 
marked between the state of Europe in those ages 
when infantile superstitions, such as the Legends of 
the saints, were at once the object of popular faith 
and the medium of religious education, and that 
manly state of sentiment which, was aroused in 
Europe by the growth of the scholastic philosophy *, 
than between the condition of Greek life which 
preceded and which followed the speculations, crude 
though they were, of the early thinkers of Ionia. 
For those men threw aside the polytheism of 
their early education, and learned to regard the 
cause of all things as one ; and in doing so, they 
took a step as it were to a conception of the great- 
ness of the Divine Being. Yet the difficulties which 
beset their way will be seen from the fact that the 
leader of that band, Thales, in spite of possessing on 

1 The beneficial influence here attributed to scholasticism is 
only in its value as a discipline. It taught little real truth ; but 
it exercised the faculties. Its character has been well described 
as being " the noblest philosophy ever ruined for want of matter, 
as the cotemporary Troubadour poetry was the noblest poetry 
ever ruined for want of form." The date of the eleventh century 
above given is only intended to indicate the dawn of intellectual 
reillumination. The influence of scholasticism was in the twelfth 
and two following centuries. 



sebm. i. ON DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. 11 

the one hand the ideas of God as a first great 
cause, and also the idea of the unity of this cause, 
was unable to combine the two so as to infer the 
Divine Personality. Strange indeed, yet so it was, 
that men could understand the unity — nay, the 
infinity — of the first cause before they were able to 
discover that those attributes imply the existence of 
a personal mind. 

The inquiry, as if in marvellous confirmation of 
the difficulty with which the reason ascends to a 
true idea of God, was not resumed for nearly 
two centuries, notwithstanding the ceaseless specula- 
tions by which that period was characterised. The 
names of those early thinkers deserve perhaps to be 
recorded, for even when the light of their teaching 
reaches us through the distance of twenty-three 
centuries, they shine like luminaries of the first 
magnitude. It was Anaxagoras who had the 
honour of reviving the inquiry, and who was the 
first to arrive by the examination of nature at the 
idea of an infinite personal intelligence as its Creator 
and Governor. The inquiry did not, however, end 
with him. Suspended during the half century of 
intellectual scepticism, and of political commotion 
which followed him, it was resumed by Plato, who 
superadded (as we before stated) to the ideas of life 
and personality in God, the idea of moral attributes 
and a moral providence. 



12 



ON DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. 



SERM. I. 



These three ideas, the discovery of the three 
individuals whose names have been mentioned, form 
the collective conception which the period of the 
most acute speculation could attain in reference to the 
Divine Being 1 ; and the subject affords us matter for 
serious thought ; for you will notice that, while by 
dint of successive efforts they obtained an indistinct 
glimpse of God's attributes, they were hardly able 
to make any discovery of the relations which He 
sustains toward man. Compare with their views the 
language of Isaiah in our text, and you will find his 
views as much superior to theirs in conception as 
they are loftier in expression. " Thus saith the 
high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose 
name is Holy ; I dwell in the high and holy place ; 
with Him also that is of a contrite and humble 
spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble and to 
revive the heart of the contrite ones." The Greeks 
could discover in an humble degree the One that 
inhabiteth eternity ; in some sense they could 

1 It may be thought that some notice ought to have been taken 
of the theology of Aristotle. The omission was made when the 
Sermon was written, because Aristotle's pantheism seemed a step 
backwards from Plato's monotheism, rather than an advance. 
The writer would at the present time justify the omission, because, 
under the view which he now takes of Plato's theology, he would 
consider Aristotle's view a mere variation in statement, not in the 
point of view ; the Divinity of Plato being the highest formal 
cause, that of Aristotle the highest final ca use. In neither view 
is Deity a person ; in both an abstraction. 



SERM. I. 



Otf DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. 



13 



even perceive His moral attributes and see that His 
name is Holy ; but they could know nothing of His 
dwelling with the contrite. Nay, that which is 
more striking is the fact that, in proportion as they 
attained to the one idea, they lost the other. Under 
the vulgar polytheism they had been wont to regard 
the gods as conversant with the affairs of men, as 
rewarders of good and avengers of evil ; but when 
they rose to the idea of God as a cause, as infinite, 
as intelligent, they conceived Him as reposing in the 
perfection of His own blessedness, and as regardless 
of the insignificant affairs of mortals. It was revela- 
tion alone which combined the two ideas. The very 
combination is one of those thoughts of God, which 
are not man's thoughts, to which man could not by 
mere reason penetrate. 

2. We proceed accordingly to notice the discoveries 
on this subject gradually unfolded by divine Kevela- 
tion, — the successive steps of advancing knowledge 
through which Providence has brought mankind. 

We need not pause to examine what was the 
information which the Hebrew patriarchs were 
permitted to enjoy concerning the greatness and 
condescension of God, because there is one remark- 
able epoch pointed out in the Scriptures at which 
human knowledge on these subjects was suddenly 
increased. 

An exiled shepherd was the subject of the re vela- 



14 



ON DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. 



SERM. I. 



tion. 1 A vision was presented of a burning bush, 
and to the mind of the praying shepherd, and through 
him to his nation and the world, was vouchsafed 
the knowledge of that awe-inspiring and mysterious 
attribute of Deity, 44 1 am that I am." We cannot 
measure the amount of religious knowledge which 
Moses previously possessed. Undoubtedly he had 
some conception of the spirituality and unity of God 
and of the responsibility of man, and it is hardly to 
be supposed that his experience had not sometimes 
brought home to him the consciousness of the ancient 
patriarch, " Truly God was here, and I knew it not." 
But it was then for the first time that he was taught 
to realise distinctly that the God of Abraham was in- 
finite and omnipresent, and that these attributes were 
the pledge that He would fulfil His promises to the 
Jewish people. The very scene of the vision was 
suited to its subject. It lay among the solitudes of 
Horeb. Moses was alone, surrounded only by those 
grand types of unchanging nature, " the everlasting 
hills." And he was made to feel that, even there, 
God was with him ; that there was no such thing as 
solitude, that every spot through the expanse of 
space was inhabited by the Almighty; that at any 
moment the heavens might reveal to him His pre- 
sence ; that though fancying himself in loneliness, 
he was in contact with his Maker. 

1 Exodus iii. 2—9. 



SEKM. I. 



ON DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. 



15 



And if any one would wish to remark the effect 
which that revelation of the infinity of God had on 
the mind of Moses, let him turn to the record of the 
Creation which he has prefixed to his writings, — a 
record which contains conceptions so sublime that 
they have even been quoted with admiration by the 
heathen critic 1 , and which, whatever may be the in- 
terpretation which science shall ultimately put upon 
them, must remain the most elevated conception of 
Creation ever presented ; for there are many noble 
thoughts of God in the Scriptures and many which 
must excite marvel, but there is not one more noble 
than Moses' narrative of the dawn of Creation. 2 
That conception is grand which the Bible affords us 
when it presents the thought of the Divine Being as 
the sustainer of the whole universe, animate and 
inanimate, that in Him we live, and move, and have 
our being ; so that whether we look out upon the 
stars as they march in their brightness, or hear the 
winds as they sweep by in their rushings, or watch 

1 Longinus on the Sublime, ch. 9. 

2 The thought, and in some cases the language, of the next 
page is borrowed from one or two sermons of the Eev. H. 
Melvill. I wish to take this opportunity of saying that shortly 
before writing the present Sermon I had read several sermons by 
this eloquent preacher, and I believe that in composing the second 
head of this Sermon I borrowed a few scattered expressions from 
him consciously, and probably some unconsciously. I wish to 
make this general acknowledgment, not being able to remember 
the exact references to his works. 



16 



ON DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. 



SERM. I. 



the waters as they flow in their tides, all, all are sus- 
tained by His hand and regulated by His will ; so 
that there moves not a being even on the outskirts 
of Creation that does not draw animation from His 
fulness, for He filleth all in all. That is, if possible, 
a still more sublime conception — the vision which 
the Bible shows us in the distant future of the 
spreading of a great white throne : upon it sits the 
Ancient of Days ; sea and land yield up, in the 
twinkling of an eye, the myriads which are held in 
the sepulchre ; all are marshalled there — the kings 
and great ones renowned in history, the noble and the 
mean, the learned and the ignorant. The remotest 
corners of the earth, the most distant ages of time, 
contribute their spirits to the tremendous gathering 
of those who are to receive their everlasting doom. 
Inanimate nature seems (as it were) to sympathise 
with the solemn scene ; for the earth and the heavens 
flee away, and there is found no place for them. 

But, grand as are these conceptions, that seems 
still grander where Moses makes us spectators of the 
birth of created nature. He calls up to our imagina- 
tion a season in the distant depths of a past eternity, 
when the assemblage of stars and of systems which 
strew the fields of space did not exist ; when no 
glorious or undying spirits, angelic or human, lived 
to comprehend the God that had given them being. 
Nothing ever broke that wondrous silence save the 



SJERM. 1. 



ON DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. 



1? 



voice of the Eternal One, who existed from the un- 
fathomable depths of eternity. God was there then, 
as now, in three Persons, the ever-blessed Father, 
Son, and Holy Ghost. But the universe held only 
God, and in that Divine Being was the attribute of 
benevolence, in-finite then as now ; and that bene- 
volence craved the being girt round by dependent 
creatures. It seemed not good to God to continue 
alone ; the sublime loneliness was infringed ; the 
word was spoken, and the depths of space became 
strewed with worlds; and immortal spirits, spark! ings 
of His infinity, thronged His presence. 1 " The 
morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God 
shouted for joy/' Such is the conception of the 
Divine Being which Moses has presented to us, and 
from it we may understand, better than from words, 
what was the revelation of the Infinite vouchsafed 
to him at Horeb. 

We may also be sure that we shall not err if we 
regard Moses' state of religious knowledge as the 
highest limit to which mankind attained under the 
Law. In tracing the growth of ideas on this subject 
in later dispensations, we should not forget that the 
progress of man's religious knowledge has been 
marked by epochs rather than by continuous ad- 
vancement. Some new revelation has given a sudden 

1 The idea in this passage was suggested by some remarks in 
Br. Harris's " Preadamite Earth." 

C 



18 



ON DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. 



SEKM. I, 



expansion to it, and it lias then remained stationary 
for a period. Thus it should be remembered that 
the Law is separated from the age of the Prophets, 
which commenced with Samuel, by a chasm of nearly 
four hundred years, — a period almost as long as 
that which intervened between the voice of the last 
prophet, Malachi, and the coming of St. John the 
Baptist, — an interval during which revelation was 
wholly silent, in which, in the striking language of 
Scripture, " there was no open vision." Accordingly, 
when the voice of inspiration again is heard, the 
ideas which it utters are really, on some subjects, so 
much in advance of those which were presented by 
the Law, that there is correctness in the ancient 
view which regarded the Law and the Prophets as 
two distinct revelations. Though this improvement 
in religious knowledge is especially evident in the 
light which the Psalms and Prophecies cast on the 
meaning of sacrifice and on the coming of the 
Messiah, yet some degree of advance may also be 
traced in those doctrines which form the present 
subject of consideration. 

For no one can read the Psalms without feeling 
that their writers, and especially David, had more 
elevated views both of the greatness of God and 
His condescending love, than were furnished to pious 
minds under the Law. What frequent intimations, 
for example, are to be found that the contemplation 
of the visible creation ought to have an efficacy in 



SERM. I. 



ON DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. 



19 



inspiring belief in God, and adoration and love of 
His perfect attributes ; yet how equally marked 
is David's unwavering faith in the presence of God 
with the heart of the praying worshipper ! His own 
early life had probably prepared his mind for inspi- 
rations of this character. We can easily imagine 
that when wandering together with a band of 
attendants amid the rugged highlands that mark 
the physical features of Southern Palestine, hunted 
down by the malice of an implacable foe, he would 
be compelled to pass many days and nights with 
no other employment than the communings with 
nature, and with the God of nature through His 
works, which would arise in his poetic and pious 
mind. It was in deserts, indeed, similar to those in 
which he was an exile, that the ancestors of his 
nation had wandered for a generation ; yet they 
had recorded no conceptions such as his. Their 
faith in God's protection may have been as real as 
his, but it cannot have been as elevated ; for they 
believed in a God whose visible manifestation, as 
a cloud by day and a meteor by night, was the 
proof of His presence ; but David, without such 
miraculous evidence, was able to rise by meditation 
on His works, to the conviction of the immeasur- 
able greatness of that Being, of whose support he 
felt nevertheless sure, and whose presence, in some 
real but humble sense, he found within his own heart. 



20 



ON DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. 



SERM . I. 



What can exceed, for example, his conception of 
God expressed in the words, " The heavens declare 
the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His 
handy work. Day unto day uttereth speech, and 
night unto night sheweth knowledge. Their line 
is gone out through all the earth, and their words 
to the end of the world." 1 And, passing by means 
of analogy from these physical to the moral laws of 
God's judgments, he adds, " More to be desired are 
they than gold, yea, than much fine gold ; by them 
is thy servant taught, and in keeping of them there 
is great reward." Again, " When I consider the 
heavens, the works of thy hands, the moon and the 
sun which thou hast ordained, what is man that 
thou art mindful of him, or the son of man, that 
thou so regardest him ? Thou has made him a 
little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him 
with glory and honour." 2 Again : " Who is so great 
a God as our God, that hath His dwelling so high, 
and yet humbleth himself to behold the things there 
are in heaven and on earth?" 3 How noble are 
these thoughts concerning God's greatness ! Simi- 
larly concerning His eternity, in the passages : " From 
everlasting to everlasting thou art God." " Thy 
kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and thy domi- 
nion endureth throughout all generations. The 

1 Psalm xix. 1 — 4. 2 Psalm viii. 3 — 5. 

3 Ps. cxiii. 5, 6. (Prayer-book, i.e. Miles Coverdale's version.) 



SERM. I. 



OX DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. 



21 



Lord upholdeth all that fall, and raiseth up all 
those that be bowed down." 1 And (to allude only 
to one more instance) what words could more nobly- 
express the overwhelming contemplation of God's 
omnipresence, or more separate the infinite Being 
from the finite, than the passage, "Whither shall 
I go from thy spirit, or whither shall I flee from thy 
presence ? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there ; 
if I make my bed in hell, behold thou art there. If 
I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the 
uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy 
hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. 
If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me ; even 
the night shall be light about me ; yea, the darkness 
hideth not from thee ; but the night shineth as the 
day ; the darkness and light are both alike to thee."' 2 
This is the utterance surely of one who felt to 
the fullest that if he were endowed with unlimited 
powers of motion, he could never for a lonely instant 
escape from God ; that God would remain at the 
spot which he had left, and be found at the place 
which he had reached, that the darkness of the 
midnight shrouded not from Him, that the depths 
of the heart lay open to His inspection ; that no 
act could escape His observation, no wickedness be 
so stealthy as to go undetected by Him. 

1 Psalm xc. 2 ; cxlv. 14. 

2 Psalm cxxxix. 8 — 12. David's view of nature must be re- 
garded as an artistic or emotional, rather than as a scientific one. 

c 3 



22 



ON DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. 



SEKM. I. 



If we pass from the Psalms to the Prophets, from 
David to Isaiah, though we do not find much advance 
in the conception of the greatness of God, yet there 
is a growing clearness in the ideas concerning God's 
holiness and His condescension in dwelling with the 
sinful. " The Holy One of Israel" is (if the expres- 
sion may be allowed) Isaiah's favourite mode of 
speaking of the Almighty. We may perhaps trace 
the cause of this peculiar mode of thought (as we 
did previously in the case of Moses) to the vision 
which was given to him at his call to the pro- 
phetic office. 1 The Lord appeared to him on His 
throne ; and seraphim stood around crying, " Holy, 
Holy, Holy." We cannot wonder that the prophet 
stood confounded, and said, " Woe is me, for I am 
a man of unclean lips." It was the manifestation 
of the holiness of God which convinced Isaiah 
of his own imperfection. And the seraph took a 
live coal, and touched the lips whose uncleanness 
he had bewailed, and pronounced that his sin 
was purged. Can we wonder that such a sight as 
this, — the radiant form of the Lord throned in 
fire and cloud, with angels chanting their song of 
triumph, — should leave a lasting impression on the 
prophet, alike of God's holiness and of human sinful- 
ness ; of God's majesty and condescension ? or need 
we seek for any other epoch than this, when the 



Isaiah vi. 



SERM. 2. 



ON DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. 



23 



revelation was made to him, which he has expressed 
in onr text, that " the high and holy One who in- 
habiteth eternity, dwells with the humble, and revives 
the spirit of the contrite ? " 

If we leave the early dispensations, and pass on 
to the Christian, we shall find that the thoughts 
of men are again widened. Christianity indeed adds 
little to our idea of the infinity of God ; but it adds 
much to the idea of His mercy and condescension. 
What a palpable proof, for example, of God's love is 
seen in the fact of the appointment of a human 
mediator ! If Christ had been merely divine, if He 
were unallied with ourselves, if He had never taken 
our nature nor experienced our trials, could we have 
confidence in committing ourselves to Him ? If you 
would encourage me to carry my sorrows to such 
a mediator, you could only point to his infinite 
greatness and amazing power ; but this would merely 
increase my misgiving whether he would condescend 
to notice such an unworthy being as myself ; for in 
proportion as you raise my conception of him, you 
remove him from all companionship with the sinful. 
But when I see the Word made nesh, it is a pledge 
that whatever is human must come within the sphere 
of His mercy. Watch those thirty-three years of 
His earthly life ; -see Him tasting deep of every 
sorrow ; sustaining every human relation ; bearing 
others' sufferings, and carrying their trials, never 

c 4 



24 



ON DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. 



SERM. I. 



refusing mercy to the vilest, healing the most im- 
pure ; and remember that the same being, though 
gone on high, is Jesus still ; so that now, within the 
very shrine of the eternal glory, there dwells one 
in human form, with all the strength of human 
sympathies, and the remembrance of human trials, 
interceding for us ; infinite in power, because God, 
unceasing in sympathy, because man : and tell me 
if you do not feel confidence to approach the mercy- 
seat, and cast your load of sin before Him ; — tell me 
if you do not now understand, with a fulness which 
even Moses and David and Isaiah could never realise, 
that He who inhabiteth eternity indeed dwells with 
the humble, and is willing to revive the heart of the 
contrite. 

How marvellously also are we made to feel the 
condescension of God, by the doctrine that Christ 
has given another Comforter to dwell in the human 
heart ! For though His miraculous gifts are no longer 
the sensible proof of the Spirit's presence, yet His 
moral influences are as real now as ever. We are 
not awed by unearthly spectacles, nor convinced by 
supernatural evidence ; but wherever there is a heart 
touched with a sense of its own sinfulness, or longing 
with anxious earnestness to be delivered from the 
slavery of sin, or conscious that it has, indeed, been 
turned from the love of sin to the love of God, there 
the Spirit's operation is manifested ; there His 



SERM. I. 



ON DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. 



25 



influences are found, even now. Ask any one who 
is the blessed recipient of those deep searchings of 
hearts, and he will respond in the words of the 
Prophet : " Truly, the high and lofty One that in- 
habiteth eternity, whose name is holy, dwelleth with 
him that is of a humble and contrite spirit." 

3. We have now completed our survey of the inform- 
ation which is supplied to us in reference to the Divine 
greatness and condescension by Reason and Revela- 
tion. There remains, however, another medium of 
communication. Startling as it may seem, we can 
show that the discoveries of modern Science have 
opened views of the Divine greatness which even add 
something to that which Divine revelation itself sup- 
plies. In some respects, indeed, the discoveries of 
science fall immeasurably below those of revelation, 
but in other subjects not so. And it is a new, and 
I hope to make it appear an instructive, view of 
science, to regard it as a revelation, differing only from 
the divine one in being communicated without super- 
natural inspiration, through the agency of human 
genius. In truth, the discoveries which the human 
mind makes cannot be regarded as an accident. 
Though they are not direct gifts from the Almighty, 
yet a believer in a moral governor must admit them to 
be part of the scheme of Providence. If discoveries 
merely related to the material welfare of man, we could 
conceive it barely possible that they arose by accident ; 



26 



ON DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. 



SERM. I. 



but when we see that they bear directly on human 
civilisation, and on the advancement of that which is 
eternal in man, and seem marvellously adapted to 
promote such advancement, we might establish an 
argument from final causes in favour of their occur- 
rence by design. Thus, for example, when we look 
back on an event like the Protestant Reformation, 
we cannot think that the Almighty was indifferent to 
an act or series of acts which must ever stand out as 
the most glorious of all revolutions, the charter of the 
intellectual, social, and religious freedom of "entire 
nations ; and when we see how preeminently the 
single invention of the art of printing has contributed 
to diffuse that freedom, and to establish it as the 
invaluable inheritance of man, can the mind that 
believes in a God of Providence doubt that such 
coincidences are in the hands of Him in whom we 
live, and move, and have our being ? Nor will 
such an individual read a Divine purpose in those 
discoveries only which contribute to utility; he will 
perceive it in those also which have no other use 
than merely to enlarge the range of human thought. 
Accordingly, in this view, Science becomes a kind of 
revelation from God, given by natural means, yet 
ordered of Providence. 

Thus, for example 1 , what an advance has been made 
beyond even the knowledge which the Scripture 
1 Compare Hitchcock's Geology and Religion (Lect. xiii.). 



SEKM. I. 



OX DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. 



27 



writers possessed, in our conception of the infinite 
greatness of God, by the discoveries of modern 
Astronomy! If one of the ancient prophets, who 
conceived this world to be the principal body in the 
universe, and who had no satisfactory view either of 
the sky or the bodies which moved in it, could have 
been taught those truths which observations by the 
telescope and the calculations of modern analysis 
have been instrumental in establishing, how immea- 
surably would his conceptions of the Divine Being 
have been enlarged, and his reverence for His great- 
ness have been enhanced ? Give him to understand 
that the earth is but an inferior member in a small 
system of stars ; unfold to him the plan of that 
system of which, viewing it from the earth, he only 
sees the section; then show him that larger system 
in which our whole solar system forms a mere speck ; 
carry on his thoughts still farther to systems situated 
at such a distance, that the glittering millions of the 
bodies which compose them are undistinguishable 
except as a spot of nebulous light ; place before him 
the extraordinary fact that the ray of light, travelling 
at a velocity which baffles the powers of imagination, 
though not of calculation, probably must have left 
those bodies even thousands of years ago ; convince 
him further, that the chief part of these statements 
are not theory, but really matters of measurement, 
depending originally upon facts the most obvious, 



28 



ON DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. 



SERM. T. 



and computations the most simple, and would not lie 
be prepared to admit that God has, indeed, unfolded 
to these later ages of the world conceptions of His 
own infinity and majesty, which prophets of old waited 
for and sought, but never found? 

Nor is it only by means of the infinite in greatness, 
but also by the infinite in smallness, that we learn 
the nature of God ; for as the telescope has revealed 
to us the one, so the microscope has laid bare the other. 
Each has enlarged human power so as to confer on 
it (we might almost say) a new sense. When we 
find a world of minute life discovered to us, unper- 
ceived by our unassisted senses, — nay, when we find 
that with every successive increase in the power of 
the instrument, a world of still more and more 
minute life is laid bare, so as to seem to have no limit 
to its immeasurable minuteness, just as in the other 
direction the series of worlds seems to reach to infinity 
in their immeasurable remoteness ; when we find 
these minute beings wondrous in structure, and sur- 
rounded abundantly by all that is adapted to their 
wants ; we see that the vastness of God's care reaches 
to the fleeting and insignificant unit of an insignificant 
race ; the very atom is not overlooked ; and we 
begin to understand in a deeper sense what is meant 
by the declaration that God is " the high and lofty 
One, that inhabiteth eternity." 

If we pass from these sciences, others meet us 
which teach the same doctrine. For as Astronomy 



SERM. I. 



OX DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. 



29 



has stretched our conceptions to apprehend the 
extent of the physical universe in space, so does 
Geology expand them in relation to our ideas of 
time. It used to be considered that about six 
thousand years ago, the earth and the whole ma- 
terial universe were spoken into existence in a 
moment of time. We now understand that the 
Scripture account, which was supposed to imply 
this, can only relate to the preparation of this 
earth for the habitation of man, not to its original 
creation. For science has proved, by irrefragable 
evidence \ that the first act of creation must be 
referred to a period indefinitely but immensely 
remote; and that successive ages have passed over 
this globe, during which it has been the seat of 
numerous systems of organic life, differing from 
one another, yet all linked into a great system by 
a most perfect unity. The revolution of thought 
which reduced the world to its true position in 
the universe of space did not more immeasurably 
enlarge our ideas of the Divine Being than this 
has, which has reduced the era of human history 
to its true position in the immensity of time. 

And as Astronomy has revealed to us the infinity 
of the present creation, and Geology the vastness of 
the past, so has the science of Mathematics laid 
open to our view the infinite wisdom which has 
1 See a note appended to Sermon III. of this volume. 



30 



ON DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. 



SERM. 1. 



provided for the future. If any branch of know- 
ledge appeared eminently unlikely to unfold to us 
any information about God, you would think it 
would be that system of symbolic formulae and 
abstract notions, which seems to stand in utter 
isolation alike from nature and from man. And 
yet when we apply it to predict the attractions of 
the heavenly bodies in periods yet to come, it un- 
folds to us some results of extraordinary grandeur. 
When we trace the effects of the mutual disturb- 
ances of the planets, we seem to approach a mighty 
catastrophe, which their mutual action will at some 
time bring about; yet as we pursue our calcula- 
tions we arrive at a few unassuming formula?, 
which, interpreted by reason, reveal to us the in- 
finite wisdom of God; for we find that not only 
vast cycles of time are established in which these 
disturbances, when verging on the catastrophe which 
we dread, shall begin to be reversed in their effect, 
and thus restore the whole solar system to the posi- 
tion which it originally occupied ; but also that, by 
an exquisitely contrived plan of compensation, the sta- 
bility of all those elements which are essential to the 
safety of the system is permanently guaranteed. 1 

1 The allusion is to Lagrange's theorems on the stability of the 
inclinations of the planetary orbits, the conservation of the mean 
distances and periods, and the stability of the eccentricities. They 
are stated in most works on the planetary theory ; e. g. in Airy's 
Mathematical Tracts, or Pratt's Mechanical Philosophy. Sir J. 



SKRM. I. 



ON DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. 



31 



Who can contemplate these amazing results, which 
manifest the infinite contrivance of the Almighty 
Architect, without a feelino; of devout thankfulness 
that we have been permitted thus to discover traces 
of the high and lofty One who inhabiteth eternity ! 

The illustrations which have hitherto been given 
show how Physical Science has revealed the infinity 
of God ; we might add, also, that Mental Science has 
equally revealed His attribute of holiness. For as we 
study the microcosm, man, we remark the existence 
of a faculty there, acting as God's vicegerent, impe- 
ratively forbidding sin ; and as we study man in the 
larger relations of society, we observe that a system of 
pleasure and pains has been annexed to virtue and 
vice, of such a character that virtue is made its own 
reward, and vice its own punishment. 1 So that if 
we before learned to understand that God was high 
and lofty, and that He inhabiteth eternity, we now 
are taught that 64 His name is holy." 

These remarks must suffice in proof of the asser- 
tion, that Science has opened to us some views of the 
Divine Being which even surpass those which are fur- 
nished by Scripture itself. It will however moderate 
the pride with which we might be in danger of regard- 
ing Science, if we remark the deficiencies of it as a 

Herscliel has attempted to give a popular explanation of them in 
his work on astronomy (part ii. ch. 12, 13). 

1 Compare Chalmers' Bridgewater Treatise (ch. 1 — 3). 



32 



ON DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. 



SERM. I. 



revelation, in certain other respects. It reveals to us 
Him who inhabiteth eternity, but it tells us nothing 
of His willingness to dwell with the humble ; it reveals 
to us general laws, it cannot teach a special Provi- 
dence; it may show us man's misery and his need 
of penitence; but it is the Bible alone which can 
tell us that the Infinite is approachable by prayer, 
and willing to revive the heart of the contrite. 

We have now traced through the world's history 
the successive discoveries which Eeason, Revela- 
tion, and Science have made concerning the great- 
ness and condescension of God. It only remains, 
in conclusion, to draw from the subject very briefly 
some practical instruction on the motives and means 
of religious living, which may tend to advance us 
a step in the path toward that world where the 
infinite God shall no longer be comprehended im- 
perfectly by laborious processes of inference, but in 
the simple power of an undimmed intuition shall 
be known face to face, and be seen as He is. 

If it be indeed a fact, that the high and lofty One 
that inhabiteth eternity is willing to dwell with 
man, what appeals it ought to make both to our 
fears and our hopes ! The thought ought to warn 
us that nothing can escape His observation, that 
all our sins lie open to His searching gaze, and 
are registered in the book of His undying memory ; 
and if He be represented to us as caring so much 



SEBM. I. 



ON DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. 



33 



for man that He has set his heart upon him, what 
can we expect if we slight the salvation which He 
proffers us but the vengeance of his overwhelm- 
ing greatness? 

On the other hand, what a blessed hope it fur- 
nishes to each one of us ! The infinite God is willing 
to become our friend, and to make our hearts His 
dwelling-place. What privilege can be so exalted 
as this? We see some men moved by an honour- 
able ambition covet the prize of worldly praise, 
or the friendship of the great of the earth; and 
others withdraw themselves from the hurry of so- 
ciety to commune with the minds of former genera- 
tions, as they meditate on the works which hand 
down to us their thoughts. But how immeasurably 
nobler is the privilege of entering into communion 
with Him that inhabit eth eternity ! how much more 
exalted an employment to retire to seek of Him to 
send his Spirit to dwell within our hearts ! 

The method whereby this privilege is open to us 
is plain. He dwelleth with him that is of a con- 
trite and humble spirit. The one requisite for its 
attainment is that we really feel our own sinfulness, 
and ask for His presence. Therefore, if there be 
one of us more conscious than his fellows of his 
own exceeding great needs, and well-nigh despond* 
ing that so high a privilege can be for him, he may 
take comfort that the Almighty does not seek for 

D 



34 



ON DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. 



SERM. I. 



worthiness in us, — He only asks for willingness; 
that He will be found of all who approach Him in 
earnest penitent prayer, for He will revive the 
spirit of the humble, and the heart of the con- 
trite ones. How great a means also of realising 
His nearness should we find it, if we were to bear 
before us the thought of His greatness and omni- 
presence ! What a reality would it throw into our 
prayers, either in public worship or in private, if 
we forced upon ourselves, as we bow the knee in 
supplication, the thought of Him whose presence 
we are invoking! How would it hallow our lives 
if we possessed within us, amid the pressure of 
business or the whirl of fashion, the vision of the 
infinite God ; if we remembered that no fretting 
cares, no innocent excitement, need shut us out 
from His presence; nay, that from amid the hurry 
of the multitude ■ and the tumults of life there is 
a hearing for every humble heart in the heavenly 
temple ; that the unuttered breathings of the most 
secret wants of every contrite spirit are seen, and 
known, and heard, and answered afar off, in that 
place where the Babel tumult of earth is hushed, 
and the stillness of the sacred presence is unbroken 
save by the seraph chaunt of " Holy, Holy, Holy," or 
by the chorus of reverent praises, which rises from 
the ten thousand times ten thousand of the re- 
deemed spirits of the just made perfect! 



SERM. I. 



ON DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. 



35 



It is indeed a joyful thought that God so in- 
habiteth eternity, that travel where I may in un- 
limited space, I can never reach the lonely spot 
where He is not present as my guardian, never find 
the solitary scene where He is not as watchful over 
me as if the universe were a void, and myself its 
sole inhabitant; and, therefore, I know that though 
I may live among the humblest, I am as much 
observed of Him as a monarch on his throne ; that 
when I go to my daily toil, or say my daily prayer, 
when I lie down or rise up, I am cared for of 
Him; so that I cannot weep the tear which He 
sees not, nor feel the pang which He notes not, 
nor breathe the prayer which He hears not. 



Note, 

On the Theological Ideas of some early Greek Philosophers. 

It has been stated in a note to the preceding Sermon, that the 
writer of it has been subsequently led to alter his views in refer- 
ence to the tenets which some of the old Greek philosophers 
named in it, entertained on the subject of Deity. He thinks that 
he had attributed to them more than they consciously knew. He 
had made them think on theological subjects in too modern a 
spirit. It is important to remember that the study of those early 
thinkers is like the study of a fossil world. The same words 
which we now use were used by them, but with wholly different 
meanings. The difficulty is really not to find dissimilarities 
between them and ourselves, but rather to find points of agree- 
ment. 

d 2 



36 



ON DIVINE ATTRIBUTES. 



SERM. I. 



The points, accordingly, in which the preceding Sermon appears 
to exceed the limits of fact are : — 

1st. In attributing to Thales, on the strength of Plato's remark 
in the " Philebus," conscious attempts to speculate on theology ; 
whereas his speculations partook rather merely of the character 
of ontology or cosmogony, and can only be regarded as relating 
to theology in the single point where he touched on the idea of 
power or efficient cause, and identified it with the material cause, 
making both reside in Water, thus attributing a kind of soul to 
nature. 

2nd. In making the Nove of Anaxagoras' system to be a 
personal intelligence, whereas it was probably hardly more than 
the idea of order or law, presiding over nature, in contradistinc- 
tion to Heracleitus' view of constant flux in phenomena. 

3rd. In making Plato to have regarded Deity as a person, and 
interpreting the term ayadbg in his description to refer to moral 
qualities. His God was rather the mere principle of Divinity, 
and the goodness of his Deity was only order or harmony. The 
supreme \lea seems to have been at once the supreme type of 
goodness and the supreme formal cause, God. So that the 
'Idea, arising first in Plato's mind as a mode of accounting for 
reminiscence (as in the " Meno") ; then becoming a mode in 
controversy for refuting scepticism (as in the Thesetetus) ; next, 
regarded as having a real existence in nature and in knowledge 
(as in the " Republic"), analogous to our "law of nature" or 
our " hypothesis "; lastly (in the " Philebus") came to be regarded 
as the supreme cause, the most abstract harmony, the God. The 
whole account of the Deity in the " Republic" (b. ii.) is explicable 
on this hypothesis. 

Thus all philosophical theology in Greece was Pantheistic, i. e. 
if Pantheism be made to mean any theory which admits an im- 
personal first cause, and to include, (1st.) the theory which teaches 
an anima mundi; (2nd.) that which regards God as the sum total 
of all that exists (Pantheism proper); and (3rd. ) that which regards 
Deity as an abstraction, synonymous with the idea of perfection. 
Thales might possibly represent the first of these views ; the 
Eleatics the second ; Anaxagoras, Plato, and Aristotle, the third. 



SERMON II. 



DIVINE PROVIDENCE IN* GENERAL LAWS. 
(Preached before the University, December 13th, 1857.) 



Acts xvii. 28. 

" In him we live, and move, and have our being." 

St. Paul's visit to Athens, on which occasion the 
speech was uttered of which these words form a 
part, is one of the most interesting passages of 
apostolic adventure which Scripture history has 
preserved to us. If St. Luke had merely informed 
us that the Apostle in the course of his missionary 
travels visited the two great centres of ancient 
power and civilization, Athens and Rome, but 
had omitted to record his acts and speeches under 
those circumstances, we should have been pro- 
bably more disappointed by the omission of such 
a narrative than by that of any other portion 
of his eventful life. We should have wished 
i to know how St. Paul felt on those occasions as 
a man, and how he acted as an Apostle. We 

D 3 



38 



GENERAL LAWS. 



SEim. ii. 



could even be content to have lost the narrative 
of his visit to Rome, rather than that of his 
speech at Athens; for when we had heard that 
Rome was visited by him when a prisoner, we 
might be certain that this circumstance would in- 
terfere with his freedom of action, and with the 
expression of his missionary sympathy. But we 
should have earnestly coveted to know what the 
Apostle did and said in bringing Christianity for 
the first time into contact with the religion and 
philosophy of Greece. And, therefore, we must 
set a special value upon the precise narrative which 
St. Luke has left us, which in thrilling interest 
equals all that we could have anticipated. 

The Apostle visited Athens in circumstances 
which (as we have already hinted) were wholly 
unlike those which characterised his visit to Rome. 
He entered Athens as a freeman, happy in the joyful 
recollection of escape from recent perils in Northern 
Greece. He was unattended by companions. He 
wandered alone through the city, undisturbed in 
his examination of it. And then, after his day's 
wanderings, he is described as betaking himself to 
the Agora, and breaking out into a public address 
to the gathered crowd. It is Paul the traveller no 
longer; it is Paul the Apostle. The thoughts, strug- 
gling like a pent-up fire, now express themselves in 
words. It is Paul trying to do his Lord's work 



SERM. II. 



GENERAL LAWS. 



39 



in the centre of the world's civilization. It is a 
Christian Apostle, and that Apostle, Paul, bringing 
Christianity into contact with Greek religion and 
Greek philosophy, in a city hallowed by historical 
associations, a sanctuary of art, a centre, even in 
its fall, of intellectual glory. 

No scene can be more interesting. Yet we are 
apt to allow our recollections of an earlier age of 
Athenian history to interfere with a vivid realization 
of the scene and the audience, which presented them- 
selves to St. Paul. We are accustomed to think of 
Athens only as she was in the zenith of her power; 
when, flushed with the victory of freedom, and guided 
by the consummate ability of her statesmen, she 
raised herself to the head of a vast colonial empire ; 
when her foreign power was but the parallel to 
that more enduring intellectual empire which ex- 
isted at home, — the empire of art, of thought, of 
liberty. But when St. Paul visited Athens, nearly 
five hundred years had passed since the noon-day 
of Athenian glory. Her empire had been destroyed ; 
her commerce had disappeared; her harbours were 
already beginning to be choked with sand ; and her 
territory had been absorbed in that of the power 
which had converted the Mediterranean into a 
Roman lake, from which, as from a centre, suc- 
ceeding waves of conquest were overflowing the 
earth. The rays of intellectual glory still, however, 

D 4 



40 



GENERAL LAWS. 



SERM. II. 



lingered round the setting splendour of Athens ; 
and the young nobility of Rome came to reside 
there as in a sort of University. It was with some 
of these persons, men of speculative habits of 
thought, that St. Paul was now brought into con- 
tact. His audience consisted not only of the per- 
sons who in the evening might be reposing under 
the plane-trees of the Agora, but embraced also 
certain students of the Stoic and Epicurean creeds. 
St. Paul knew this, and we may observe a won- 
derful adaptation to the tastes or the errors of 
each sect in the discourse of which his historian 
has presented the substance. 1 The Apostle was 
taken up to Mars 7 Hill; and, standing on those rock- 
hewn steps which formed then, as now, the only 
approach to the hill, he spoke with somewhat per- 
haps of the air of dignity which the great master 
has expressed in his cartoon. 2 The scene was one 

1 Some critics have supposed that St. Luke has here put into 
St. Paul's mouth a speech such as he was likely to have delivered, 
according to the dramatic method so common in the historians of 
that time. The supposition has arisen from the improbability 
that the logical mind of the Apostle Paul would be susceptible to 
the influences of poetry, and scenery, and other circumstances, 
of which the speech exhibits traces. There seems, however, 
equal internal probability against such a supposition. 

2 It is not implied by these words that the Apostle's figure, 
marred by his " thorn in the flesh," can have been so noble as 
the ideal which Rafiaelle (copying Masaccio) has presented ; but 
it may be reasonably presumed that his moral dignity and bearing 
have not been inaptly depicted in that master's cartoon. 



SERM. II. 



GENERAL LAWS. 



41 



of the most striking, the most poetical in history. 
His very opening words seemed to convey the im- 
pression which the sight of the city had made upon 
his mind, and with consummate tact he seized on 
a familiar illustration. " Men of Athens," he said, 
" all things which I behold bear witness to your 
carefulness in religion. 1 For as I was passing 
through your city and beholding the objects of your 
worship, I found amongst them an altar to the un- 
known God. This is the God whom I declare unto 
you." 

It is surely no idle fancy to suppose that the 
words which follow, may suggest to us the belief 
that the eye of the Apostle at that moment glanced 
from the eminence on which he stood, to the citadel 
which rose in queen -like stateliness before him, 
covered with those many temples sparkling at that 
time in crystalline whiteness, the remains of which 
still attract the traveller to gaze on their majestic 
outlines, beautiful even in their ruins; and from 
that exhibition of industry and wealth, devoted to 
the service of the Greek religion, the Apostle's eye 

1 It is generally known that the words used by St. Paul 
(we leiaLlaifioveaTepovc) were intended as a compliment, and not 
as a reproach, as the English translators have made them mean, 
in mistranslating them by the words " too superstitious." The 
paraphrase of St. Paul's speech here given is borrowed from the 
work on St. Paul's life and epistles by Conybeare and How son. 
(i. 401.) 



4-2 



GENERAL LAWS. 



SERM. II. 



may have glanced away again, as if by contrast, to 
the works of nature ; to the beautiful plain, bounded 
by its marble mountains on the one side, and to the 
sea and distant coast, which formed the girdle of 
the horizon, on the other. And it may have been 
under the impression of these feelings that the 
Apostle continued : — " God, who made the world 
and all things in it, seeing that He is Lord of 
heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made 
with hands," (such as then were rising in majesty 
before him ;) " neither is He served by the hands 
of men, as though he needed anything, for it is 
He that giveth unto all, life, and breath, and all 
things. And He made of one blood all the nations 
of mankind to dwell upon the face of the whole 
earth, and ordained to each the appointed seasons 
of their existence, and the bounds of their habi- 
tation ; that they should seek God, if haply they 
might feel after Him, and find Him, though He be not 
far from every one of us : for in Him we live, and 
move, and have our being ; as certain of your own 
poets have said, 4 For we are also His offspring.' 
If then we are the offspring of God, we ought 
not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, 
or silver, or stone, graven by the art and device 
of man." And then the Apostle proceeded to preach 
to that frivolous crowd, with intensest earnestness, 
a judgment to come, and the future life. 



SERM. II. 



GENERAL LAWS. 



43 



We need pursue the subject no further. The 
narrative must have an enduring interest, not only 
as one of the few, discourses in which an Apostle has 
shown a susceptibility to the influences of scenery, but 
still more as a specimen of the mode in which 
Christianity was presented for reception to a heathen, 
an educated, a philosophical audience. 

Those two schools of Stoics and Epicureans, before 
whom St. Paul spoke, divided at that period the sym- 
pathies and the belief of thinking men. Speculation 
into the deeper mysteries of existence and the problem 
of the universe had long since disappeared. 1 Expe- 

1 The Epicurean and Stoic philosophies included indeed specu- 
lations into Physics, as well as Logic and Ethics ; but the in- 
quiries were not only subordinate, but were conducted without the 
ontological speculations which had belonged to the philosophies of 
the Eleatics, of Plato, and of Aristotle. It is to the Stoics that 
we mainly owe the psychological character which has always 
since marked ethical investigations. The Stoic ethics are in tone 
modern ; all previous philosophies are like the fossil remains 
of an extinct creation. The best account of the Stoic school is 
to be found in an essay by Sir Alexander Grant, in the Oxford 
Essays for 1858. It is probably to the influence of the Stoic 
philosophy, impressed on Greek thought and on the Greek lan- 
guage, which St. Paul consciously or unconsciously received in 
his youth at the schools of Tarsus, that we must attribute the 
internal, the psychological aspect of sin, which that Apostle 
presents in the 7th of Romans and elsewhere. Sin is not in his 
view merely transgression against Heaven ; it is internal, moral 
disorganisation. Such a view does not lower the Apostle's in- 
spiration. The anointing Spirit did not obliterate peculiarities 
of knowledge or of mind in the individuals whom He inspired, 
but condescended to consecrate their various gifts. 



44 



GENERAL LAWS. 



SEEM. II. 



rience had convinced mankind of the futility of those 
attempts which speculative philosophy had made to 
solve such problems ; and the attempt had been 
laid aside, to be again and again resumed in after- 
ages, with the same ill success. Men had accordingly 
begun to feel that the business of man was not to 
speculate, but to act : and so they were divided into 
two classes ; the one of which 1 comprised those who 
bore lightly the sight of woe, and passed life in an 
elegant selfishness ; the other 2 , those who, with 
haughty self-respect, yet in the main with a serious 
view of life, acted upon convictions of duty, of 
the origin and of the future reward of which they 
were ignorant. Yet whatever may have been the 
excellence of either system, both alike were godless ; 
both were schemes of life which shut out the world 
invisible, and were constructed in disbelief of a 
personal Providence. To each of these classes St. 
Paul addressed his discourse. In the lofty and 
serene Deity, who disdained to dwell in the earthly 
temple, the Epicurean would find echoed his own 
belief ; and in the idea of an orderly system, the 
Stoic would recognise his own hypothesis of Fate. 
But St. Paul led them beyond these notions. He 
at once demolished the Atomic theory of the one, 
by teaching that God was the sustaining power in 



The Epicureans. 



2 The Stoics. 



SERM. II. 



GENERAL LAWS. 



45 



nature ; and the Pantheistic fatalism of the other, 
by the idea of the providence of a personal God. 
He taught to both that; God was very nigh, that 
He was observant of every man, and would exact 
a personal account ; that it was their privilege to 
feel after and find Him ; that their dark and troubled 
spirits might break into the light of His reconciled 
countenance. 

It is to the theory of Providence that I wish now 
to direct your attention. The disbelief in a personal 
Providence of those two old Greek schools is not 
peculiar to their time. The atheism of the Epicurean, 
the fatalism of the Stoic, have often been reproduced 
in the history of thought in succeeding ages of the 
world. Each period has its own discoveries ; each 
great thinker strikes out his own line of investigation. 
And new discoveries or new lines of thought have to 
be adjusted with existing belief, or existing belief 
surrendered to them. Hence it is that in several 
ages of Christian history, the progress of investi- 
gation has tinged men's views on Providence. 
Occasionally it has been some metaphysician, who, 
gazing into the mysteries of existence, and striving 
with his limited faculties to transcend the heights and 
depths of the infinite Mind, has figured to himself 
the universe as one magnificent whole of causes and 
effects, moving on from everlasting to everlasting by 
laws once impressed upon it, with a God perhaps to 



46 



GENERAL LAWS. 



SERM. II. 



create, but no God to superintend. 1 Or else it has 
been one who has imagined to himself the uni- 
verse as one infinite substance, ever in a state 
of evolution and development ; an ocean on whose 
bosom phenomena arise, like so many bubbles which 
appear but for a moment ; a volcano ejecting its 
contents into the air, only to receive them back 
again into the unknown depths of its own capacious 
crater. 

Nor is it merely from speculations into Mental 
phenomena that an unchristian view of Providence 
has sometimes been developed ; but the same thing 
has resulted from those real discoveries which have 
been made by the sciences which investigate Matter 
and Nature. 2 Such a view is far more difficult of 

1 The preceding sentence would describe the Deistical view 
of the last century in England and France. That which imme- 
diately follows alludes to Spinoza, and also in part to the modern 
schools of Schelling and Hegel. Spinoza reached Pantheism 
from the investigation of the infinite in space, while Schelling and 
Hegel rather arrived at it from the infinite in time. His God was 
in a sabbath of perpetual rest ; theirs in progress and develop- 
ment. Accordingly, the words " infinite substance " in the text, 
together with the two illustrations of " the ocean " and " the 
volcano," describe Spinoza's view ; the words " evolution and 
development " apply rather to that of the two philosophers who 
have just been compared with him. 

2 The reference here intended is partly to Comte and the 
Positivists, and partly to the Deistical thinkers of the last century, 
so far as their views originated in physical science, as distinguish- 
able from the metaphysical source of them to which allusion has 
already been made. 



SERM. II, 



GENERAL LAWS. 



47 



refutation, and is more captivating than that to 
which allusion has just been made, in proportion as 
it is founded on truths which are indisputable, be- 
cause admitting of verification. For among the 
great and marvellous discoveries which science has 
made, is the fact, that each region of phenomena 
seems to be directed by an invariable law of ante- 
cedent and consequent, — cause and effect. The 
astronomer is able to show that one law of the 
most simple character governs every movement 
of the planetary bodies. The most subtle dis- 
turbances as well as the most gigantic movements 
are alike explicable by it. The power to unravel 
the history of the past, the ability to predict the 
future, are proofs that the magnificent system 
of universal law moves on from age to age un- 
altered. The student who directs his attention to 
the past history of the world, and who employs a 
curious and minute examination of the rocks of 
the globe, to read therein the history of those orders 
of existence which, during cycles of time of un- 
calculable amount, have successively occupied this 
planet, finds that in the distant depths of its pri- 
meval history, the same laws were in operation as 
now ; matter crystallised in the same forms, heat 
and cold obeyed the same conditions as at present ; 
vegetable and animal life conformed to the same 
structure. The mother fern then, as now, sheltered 



48 



GENERAL LAWS. 



SERM. II. 



the infant leaflet, wrapped up within the coils of 
its own form. The animal races were created, lived, 
and passed away just as now. And if we pass from 
these studies of other planets, and of the ancient 
history of our own earth, to that small portion of 
its existence over which human history extends ; 
the man of science here again thinks that he can 
exhibit laws in operation even over man. The same 
laws govern human society, and move in popular 
commotions, and find play in human motives now 
which acted of old. History can offer her generali- 
zations. Man like matter comes under the domain 
of law. 

Can we wonder, then, that from the earliest dis- 
covery, and with each succeeding confirmation of 
the permanence of nature's laws, there has grown 
up a difficulty in believing that system of special 
Providence which the Bible unfolds? The contrast 
is felt, that Science teaches general laws, the Bible, 
special adaptations. Science shows the undeviating 
character of nature's methods : the Bible, their con- 
stant alteration in obedience to human prayers. 
Science is sceptical of a providential interference on 
the part of the Divine Being : the Bible teaches 
that He is not far from any one of us. " For in 
Him we live, and move, and have our being." 

We believe that there is truth in both of these 
views. There is a scientific side of the theory of 



SERM. II. 



GENERAL LAWS. 



49 



Providence, and a biblical view of it. The one 
teaches it to us as known to the natural senses ; 
the other penetrates the darkness which hides the 
spiritual and the invisible ; — the one tells us of 
God's works and government ; the other, of His will 
and purposes. We shall be compelled to restrict 
our attention in the present discourse to the former, 
omitting the consideration of the Scripture view of 
Providence and its harmony with the scientific. 1 

I have already, in introducing the subject, sketched 
some proofs which science has to offer, to show that 
the system of nature is administered on a general 
plan. But the great evidence of that generality 
which I wish now to bring before you, arises from 
the circumstance that it seems plain not only that 
the Divine Being governs the world by general laws, 
but that when the violation or clashing of these 
general laws bears hard on individuals, He mys- 
teriously on some occasions allows them to take their 
course in spite of the partial suffering which they 
produce. Such an illustration, while it furnishes 
proof of our principle, will offer also an opportunity 
for showing the wisdom and benevolence of such an 
arrangement ; and thus of harmonising the ideas of 
God's love and wisdom with that of His power. 

1 This Sermon was to have been followed by one on Special 
Providence, which the writer had not the opportunity of preach- 
ing. The line of inquiry which he intended to adopt is indicated 
in a note at the conclusion of the present Sermon. 

E 



50 



GENERAL LAWS. 



SERM. II. 



We may draw some instances of the mysterious 
fact which we assert, from common events of nature, 
such as accidents, pestilence, and the like. It 
will be desirable to picture to ourselves one of 
such scenes, in order to realise vividly the idea 
which we are striving to grasp. It shall be selected 
from one of those natural evils which fall upon man 
without his own fault and which he is powerless to 
resist. There is one of this kind recorded in history, 
which will always have a prominent interest as 
having first awakened the religious speculations of 
the philosopher Goethe 1 , and aroused a controversy 
on Providence between those two gifted men whose 
cenotaphs lie beneath the noble dome which grateful 
France erected to the great of her sons. 2 It is that 
great calamity which about a century ago over- 
whelmed the capital of Portugal. 3 

A fine autumn morning shone on the devoted city, 
and showed the groves and buildings, spreading up 
the heights, sparkling in beauty. The multitudes 
of its population had assembled in the churches to 
hear the morning mass, when suddenly an unaccus- 

1 Lewes' "Life of Goethe," i. 31. 

2 "Aux grands homines la Patrie reconnaissante," was the 
inscription on the frieze of the Pantheon. 

3 The earthquake occurred on All Saints' Day, 1755. The 
authority for the following account is Davy's " Letters on Lite- 
rature." I have searched in vain in the Portuguese literature 
for the official statistics. 



SERM. II 



GENERAL LAWS. 



51 



tomed sound was heard, a long mysterious rumble, 
which grew louder as it approached ; and when it 
seemed at hand, the whole city rocked like a ship 
heaving in a storm ; the houses crumbled into heaps ; 
the churches fell, and interred in their ruins the 
assembled congregations. A few escaped into the 
streets ; but another shock speedily followed and 
destroyed many of them under the falling ruins. 
A large number fled to the edge of the sea, and 
took refuge on the pier ; but lo ! to their horror, 
the great earthquake wave travelling according 
to well understood principles at a slower rate than 
the undulation in the solid ground, rolled into the 
shore, — one huge wave of water many fathoms in 
depth. In one instant a mass of several thousand 
human beings was swept from that pier into the 
sea ; and when the survivors, after the event, looked 
round on the scene of the catastrophe, they beheld 
the glorious city which but a few moments pre- 
viously had been bright with beauty and life, a 
mass of ruins, with more than sixty thousand of 
its population buried in its fall. " Great and 
marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty ; 
who shall not fear Thee, Lord, and glorify Thy 
name ? " 

1 SeeDaubeny's " Volcanos," part ii. ch. xxxii. xxxiii. ; Mallet 
on the Dynamics of Earthquakes, in " Trans. Roy. Irish Acad. 
1845." 

b 2 



52 



GENERAL LAWS. 



SERM. II. 



Who is there that does not ponder on the mystery 
of that horror ? Who does not marvel why the woe 
fell on that city? If you had asked mankind of old 
the explanation of that catastrophe, they would have 
asserted that it was an immediate judgment from 
heaven sent to overtake the guilty city, just as the 
Barbarians of Melita judged, when, seeing the viper 
fasten on St. Paul's hand, they looked upon it as 
the messenger of heaven sent to slay the murderer 
who had, indeed, escaped the shipwreck, but whom 
vengeance suffered not to live. But our blessed 
Lord, once and for ever, forbade such cruel surmises 
concerning others, when, in alluding to a recent ac- 
cident of his own time in Jerusalem, he said 1 , " Those 
eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and slew 
them, think ye they were sinners above all men that 
dwelt in Jerusalem ? I tell you nay." The lesson 
was not for them to judge others, but to take warn- 
ing to be ready themselves. 

We may well believe, indeed, that our adorable 
Saviour enunciated in this passage, and in another 
similar one, which relates to the man who was 
born blind 2 , a great and mysterious truth, which, 
like so many other great truths of the Bible, has 
been marvellously corroborated by the discoveries 
of modern science. That truth is, that not all suf- 



1 Luke x'ii. 4. 



2 John ix. 3. 



SERM. II. 



GENERAL LAWS. 



53 



fering is the result of immediate sin. We have 
reason, indeed, for believing that there is in the 
case of man some real and mysterious connection 
between sin and sorrow ; though our Lord here 
plainly implies that special suffering may be the 
effect of general sin instead of special. 1 But if we 
pass from man to the animal kingdom, we find clear 
proof of the existence of suffering and death in pe- 
riods of the earth's history antecedent to the creation 
of man, antecedent, that is, to the existence of 
human sin. 2 And though we are not absolutely 
warranted in extending to man the separation be- 
tween sin and sorrow which we thus see existing 
in the case of animals, yet we should naturally 
infer from such fact an antecedent probability that 
human history would offer some examples where 
human suffering was not the effect of sin, but merely 
a continuation of that larger system of the per- 
mission of pain by Providence, of the operation of 
which, antecedently to human creation, we find 
positive proof. May we not take the probable ex- 
istence of such instances as an unexpected means of 
explanation and corroboration of our Lord's words? 
May we not adduce them, as in some humble de- 
gree explanatory also of the permission of woe in 

1 Compare Bishop Warburton's Sermon on the Lisbon Cata- 
strophe (Works, v. pp. 286—298). 

2 See the next Sermon, and the note at p. 82. 

E 3 



54 



GENERAL LAWS. 



SERM. II. 



cases where we have no reason to infer the exist- 
ence of a judgment for sin ? Though we must 
speak with hesitation, and cannot hope to pene- 
trate far into the purposes and plans of the in- 
scrutable God, yet we may humbly and reverently 
venture to hope that we may gain by contem- 
plating the Divine doings some trace of the pos- 
sible cause of such permitted woes. Accordingly, in 
speculating upon great calamities like the Lisbon 
earthquake, we are compelled with reverence to an- 
swer, that the event was, to speak after the manner 
of men, an accident ; that certain causes producing 
earthquakes are at work in the interior of our planet, 
and that those causes acted at that moment and in 
that particular spot. 1 More we cannot say. We 
cannot tell why some counter force was not bene- 
volently operating to prevent it. We take it as a 
proof that the operation of general causes is not sus- 
pended by the Almighty, and occasionally not even 
checked by counter causes, but is still allowed to 

1 If further proof of this position were needed, it might be 
found in the fact that where earthquakes have occurred in dis- 
tricts which are various in their geological character, the destructive 
effects of the earthquake have depended on the peculiarity of 
strata on which the different towns lay. The places, e.g. situated 
on crystalline limestone have been almost unhurt ; those, on the 
contrary, which lay on clay or lava, have been rocked into ruins. 
See Scacchi's account, " Del Monte Vulture e del Tremuoto ivi 
avvenuto nel anno 1851 and Lyell's "Principles of Geology," 
ch. xxviii. 



SEKM. II. 



GENERAL LAWS. 



55 



go forward, even when the continued effect of their 
action is the means of destroying sixty thousand 
persons who were not instrumental to produce the 
mischief, and who were powerless to avert it. 

We might pass to other proofs that God myste- 
riously permits general laws to operate without in- 
terfering to check the misery which they inflict, 
drawn from accidents which are the effect of man's 
own imprudence and want of foresight, but which 
involve in their consequences those who are inno- 
cent of participation in the neglect which is their 
cause. Consider, for example, the terrific explo- 
sions which not unfrequently occur in collieries. 
Picture to yourselves one of those scenes. At the 
depth of hundreds of feet below the surface of the 
ground there exists a subterranean city, in which 
the coal rock is quarried by men living in a close 
temperature, supplied artificially with air and light, 
in presence of the constant development of a noxious 
and inflammable gas. Long galleries, diverging 
like the streets of a city, separate the miners by 
miles of tunnelled passages from the only outlet 
which exists in case of danger. In spite of all pre- 
cautions on the part of the proprietors, some sudden 
act of imprudence occurs on the part of some miner. 
The gas ignites, overpowers the force of the artificial 
current of air, and sweeps, with devouring rush, 
through the close galleries of the mine. Many are 

E 4 



56 



GENERAL LAWS. 



SERM. Hi 



instantly hurried into eternity; or, cut off in remote 
parts of the mine and unable to communicate with 
the surface, they die cruelly of starvation or are 
burnt by the fire, which, igniting the solid coal rock, 
turns those caves into a vast subterranean furnace. 1 

Is there no kind Being to aid those innocent men 
who die by accident or the imprudence of a fellow- 
workman ? Is there no God of mercy to notice their 
unprepared souls about to be called to His judgment- 
seat, — none to see the life-long sorrows of children 
cast upon this wicked world fatherless ; and of wives 
cast upon this cruel world widows ? Yes ! there is 
a Divine Being ; but He is pleased to govern by 
general laws. And the general law that gas shall, 
under certain circumstances, ignite, is in His mys- 
terious Providence allowed to have its course. The 
circumstance comes, the law holds on its course, 
and the catastrophe is its consequence ; and the 
mode (as I shall presently show you) by which 
we reconcile such occurrences with the Divine be- 
nevolence is by supposing that the suspension of 
the general law would be a greater evil than that 
which ensues by its being allowed to have its 
course. 

We might multiply illustrations, but it is only 

1 This, it will be remembered, is a literal description of the 
accident at a colliery at Lund Hill, near Barnsley, in January, 
1857. 



SERM. II. 



GENERAL LAWS. 



57 



necessary to refer further to one event of deep 
sadness which will suggest itself to every mind. 
We may learn in the miseries that have befallen 
our eastern empire how true it is that the Divine 
Being in some respects leaves nations, as well as 
mere brute unconscious matter, to the operation 
of general laws. Let me not be misunderstood. 
I do not mean that the Indian revolt is pur- 
poseless on the part of Providence ; but I wish 
you to separate between the moral lesson which 
men may derive from a calamity, and the final 
cause or purpose why the Divine Being has sent it. 
When the explosion has happened in the mine, we 
naturally gather a lesson of precaution against the 
recurrence of the accident, but we should not sup- 
pose that the Almighty had sent the explosion 
specially to lead us to improve the lamp and to 
rebuild the air-courses of our mine. Rather we 
should attribute the accident to a general law, and 
without pretending to fathom the motives or pur- 
poses of the Almighty, we should derive a valu- 
able lesson from the occurrence. Similarly also in 
the existence of a panic in commerce. We ought 
to gather a lesson as to our own deportment in 
guarding against its recurrence, without supposing 
that Providence had sent us the woe simply to 
teach us this lesson. 

The case is similar with respect to the miseries 



58 



GENERAL LAWS. 



SERM. II. 



in India. It has been commonly asserted by irre- 
flective minds, that those woes have been sent as a 
direct visitation for the simple purpose of arousing 
slumbering England to evangelise Hindostan. This 
is right and logical if they mean that such may 
lawfully be our lesson from them in order to pre- 
vent their recurrence, just as the explosion of the 
coal-mine warns us to take measures against its 
repetition, or as the outbreak of a fever stimulates 
us to use sanitary measures. 

I should be sorry if I were thought by my remarks 
to undervalue that blessed, that godlike work of mis- 
sionary labour in which so many saints have won for 
themselves immortal honour. The names of Xavier 
and Schwartz, and Heber and Martyn, inscribed in 
the roll of the Christian heroes, — men of whom the 
world was not worthy, — who have perished in striv- 
ing to evangelise Hindostan, would testify against 
him who should be impious enough to undervalue 
the work which they loved to the death. " I saw 
under the altar the souls of them that were slain 
for the word of God, and for the testimony which 
they held. And white robes were given unto every 
one of them. Therefore are they before the throne 
of God, and serve him day and night in his temple." 1 

Yet though I would not undervalue the moral les- 



1 Rev. vi. 8—11 ; vii. 15. 



BRM. n* 



GENERAL LAWS. 



59 



son of increased missionary activity which is taught us 
by the Indian miseries, let us be careful not to con- 
found this with the notion that no other object 
entered into the Almighty's purposes than the effect- 
ing this moral result, just as we should avoid the 
confusion of supposing that His sole object in send- 
ing a fever is to lead men to attend to sanitary 
considerations. In each such case of an earthquake, 
or a fever, or a rebellion, we ought to distinguish the 
three following things one from another: — 1st, the 
antecedent causes which have brought about the event ; 
2nd, the moral purpose which the Deity may have 
had in sending or permitting it ; and 3rd, the moral 
lesson which man may rationally gather from it for 
his own conduct. Accordingly, when we pass from 
the moral lesson in each case which we may properly 
collect, and from speculating about the purposes of 
the Divine Being, concerning which we really know 
nothing, except when they are revealed to us by an 
inspired prophet, to examine into the causes, i. e. the 
antecedent circumstances from which each of such 
phenomena has arisen, we shall find them to be 
brought about by the uniform operation of fixed 
causes. The atrocities of the Hindoo rebellion are 
unfortunately no isolated phenomenon, but almost 
find their parallel in severity, if not in concentration, 
(we regret to have to say it), in other centuries 
of the world's history. The mutiny of a pampered 



60 



GENERAL LAWS. 



SERM. II. 



army under the combined influence of religious 
panic and frantic patriotism, at the suggestion of 
designing persons, is no isolated phenomenon ; both 
alike have arisen heretofore from the play of human 
passion and human appetition, and will continue 
to arise unto the end of time ; and mysterious as is 
the slaughter of hundreds of our innocent country- 
men, we take that mystery to be but another proof of 
the wondrous administration of the Almighty by 
general laws. As an instance of an indiscriminate 
slaughter of guilty and guiltless, we place it parallel 
in the page of history with the devastation of the 
Palatinate in the 17th century; or with the massacre 
of the French which disgraced Sicily in the 13th ; or 
that still more fearful atrocity, which stands out 
from among the many bloody deeds of the 16th, as a 
monument of crime, the massacre of the Huguenots 
on the feast of St. Bartholomew. 

All, especially the last, are instances of a mighty 
slaughter permitted by a Providence which interfered 
not to stop those general laws which regulate human 
passion, nor to intercept those effects which the 
ingenuity of human sin produces. All alike are 
but the repetition, in political accidents, of the earth- 
quake, or the explosion, or the pestilence in the 
physical. You may gather what lessons you please 
as to your future behaviour in order to prevent their 
recurrence. But if you look to the cause of what 



SERM. II. 



GENERAL LAWS. 



61 



is past, you find its explanation in that mighty 
wonder which we are wishing to impress upon you, 
— that causes which involve suffering are allowed 
by Providence to have their play, even though they 
involve the innocent in the sweep of their operation ; 
that it seems true that in some regions of nature 
(if we may use the illustration without irreverence), 
Providence allows the world to move on, like some 
great machine \ which its author has set in motion 
as it were (to speak after the manner of men), but 
with some of whose wheels and movements he is not 
pleased afterwards to interfere. " Canst thou by 
searching find out God? Canst thou find out the 
Almighty to perfection ? " 

I have now offered a few illustrations of the abso- 
lute invariability of some portion of the Divine 
administration by law, even when such invariability 
is fraught with suffering to individuals. But I 
should be very sorry if I were to leave on your 
minds the impression that there is any degree of 
injustice, or any absence of benevolence in the per- 
mission of these miseries, or that there is no real 
Providence in them. We are obliged to conceive 
of such events under the medium of human language 
and the illustrations drawn from human experience ; 
and so I spoke just now of the world as one great 
" machine " which, as it were, acted by delegated 
1 Compare Babbage's " Bridgewater Treatise," ch. viii. 



62 



GENEKAL LAWS. 



SEEM. H. 



power without the immediate operation of God. I 
meant not this to be understood literally, but only 
by way of explanation. When we speak of such 
uniform operations of general laws, we intend not 
to exclude the idea of God as working and omni- 
present ; we only express the uniformity of the 
system according to which He is pleased to work. 
Our finite minds cannot comprehend the operations 
of a Being whose government sustains the universe, 
any more than we can comprehend the attributes of 
His infinite mind. So, without doubt, if we could 
comprehend that infinite system, we should see that 
the catastrophe is not unnoticed by God, the material 
law not disconnected with the moral, natural acci- 
dent and moral government not without their links 
of union. 

And as I wish you not to carry away the notion 
that there is no Providence in catastrophes, so also 
you should not think of them as marked by injustice. 
In questions of this kind it is enough for us to rest 
in the fact that other and more comprehensive in- 
stances of Divine benevolence exist, which show that 
the general purpose of the scheme of nature is a 
benevolent one. 1 Our inability to comprehend that 
scheme as a whole may well make us sure that if 
we could so understand it, we should see that these 

1 This principle of " the greatest happiness of the greatest 
number " has, it is well known, been adopted as the ground of 



SEKM. II. 



GENERAL LAWS. 



(33 



apparent exceptions are not such in reality. Just as 
if we stood looking on an ingenious machine, the 
general effect of which evinced consummate wisdom 
in its maker, we should at once think that any 
portion of it which seemed useless or injurious would 
have its use, if the inventor of it were to explain to 
us the plan of the instrument ; so when we look 
on the great machine of the world or the universe, 
we may be sure that the apparent exceptions to a 
benevolent object in its construction would be seen 
to be reducible to agreement with the Divine mercy, 
if we could comprehend its scheme and its harmonies. 
Nay, the very idea of these apparent severities which 
I have attempted to convey to you, has been in- 
tended to remove any misgiving which might be 
felt in reference to them. For though we cannot 
hope to explain them fully, yet we have ventured 
to suggest a partial explanation, viz. : — that such 

morals in Benthani's philosophy. Pope, at an earlier period, not 
only applied it as the rule of human conduct, hut as the measure 
of the Almighty's purposes, e.g. : — 

" The universal Cause 
Acts not by partial, but by general laws, 
And makes what happiness we justly call, 
Subsist not in the good of one but all." (Ep. iv. 35.) 
The writer of 'these Sermons does not wholly accede to either 
of these applications of it ; but merely suggests that, in the 
absence of any better explanation of the mystery, we may law- 
fully adopt the principle in the kind of manner developed in 
the text, as a probable means of reconciling God's permission of 
suffering with the idea of benevolence in His character. 



64 



GENERAL LAWS. 



SEEM. II. 



apparent severities arise from the fact that the 
Almighty allows general laws to operate, and the 
very idea of a general law possibly excludes (as 
Bishop Butler observes) the idea of meeting all pos- 
sible contingencies 1 , and implies that it must bear 
heavily in some special instances. We do not assert 
that this is the case, but we put the supposition 
that, even if it be so, there is benevolence seen on 
the large scale even here; for the government by 
general laws is itself an act of benevolence. 

We need only reflect for an instant on the amazing 
wisdom shown in some of these general laws and 
adaptations, in order to feel convinced that the wis- 
dom is itself benevolence. A familiar illustration 
will explain my meaning, the use of which may be 
permitted, though I have made use of the same 
thought in this place before. 2 Go forth any fine 
evening and cast your eyes upwards to the stars 
scattered in glittering millions on the dark vault of 
the heavens. Though numerous as the sands upon 
the sea- shore, yet the movement of each star and 
each system is regulated by the most complete 
harmony. We know little of the vast number of 

1 Butler's " Analogy," part i. ch. vii. p. 132. See Brown's 
"Philosophical Works," vol. iv. Lect. 93, 94. 

2 The allusion here is again (as at p. 30) to Lagrange's problems. 
The mathematician will remark that rigorous precision of descrip- 
tion is intentionally sacrificed for the purpose of clearness of 
illustration. 



SERM. II. 



GENERAL LAWS. 



65 



those heavenly bodies ; but of a few which lie 
nearer to our earth we know enough to be able to 
understand their movements and to predict their 
positions. And when by the engine of a refined 
calculation we compute their relations in distant time 
to come, we are allowed to understand the amazing 
wisdom with which the Divine Creator has guided 
their movements. For in estimating the mutual 
disturbances of the elements of their orbits, we are 
brought to conceive of a time in the distant future, 
when it seems that their perturbations shall exceed 
the conditions of stability, and cause an immense 
catastrophe. And is there really to be this cata- 
strophe ? No ! at the very moment when we seem 
on its verge, we find that a series of compensa- 
tions will commence, which will precisely bring back 
the system to that state in which it existed before. 
The system has oscillated like a pendulum to that 
point, and then begins its backward circuit. The 
cycle of time required for that reversal of the oscil- 
lation (if we may so describe it) must be in some 
cases millions of years. So that we arrive at this 
stupendous result, that the Divine Being has im- 
pressed a simple law upon these heavenly bodies 
according to which they move ; and yet this law 
is so exquisitely perfect, that He has by it antici- 
pated the contingencies which will occur in the in- 
conceivably distant depths of future time. " Lo, 

F 



66 



GENERAL LAWS. 



SERM. II. 



these are but a part of his ways. Canst thou find 
out the Almighty to perfection ? It is as high as 
heaven, what canst thou do ; deeper than hell, what 
canst thou know ? " As you meditate on that con- 
summate wisdom and prescience, is it not a proof 
that the government, by general laws, is itself an 
act of benevolence ? The wisdom is the benevolence. 

And as we see this truth in the physical, so also 
it holds good in the moral world. If I could not 
know the mind of God with regard to me, if He 
governed me by caprice, His conduct differing to- 
wards me to-day from what it was yesterday, I 
should not know how to deport myself before Him ; 
but as He governs by general laws, His character 
never varying, from everlasting to everlasting un- 
changing, I accept that government itself as the 
best proof of His benevolence, because I see that 
it gives me a fixed principle by which to guide my 
conduct. If I sin, I know that there is no escape 
from the law which unalterably annexes punishment 
to the offence; if I obey God's laws, I know that 
their stability is the guarantee of my security. So 
that we can now not only say, u Great and marvel- 
lous are thy works, Lord God Almighty ; " but 
also, "Just are thy ways, thou King of saints; who 
shall not fear thee, Lord, and glorify thy name ? " 

Here we must pause, omitting the consideration 
of the consoling doctrine of a Special Providence 



SERM, II. 



GENERAL LAWS. 



G7 



which is revealed in Holy Scripture. The necessity 
for this omission is to be regretted, because there 
is always harm in the exclusive attention to one 
side of a solemn question like this, and more espe- 
cially when we are groping for truth without the 
guidance which the blessed Spirit of God offers us 
in His inspired word. I have wished to speak of this 
subject in a reverent manner, and though presenting 
strongly the secular view of Providence, yet I have 
endeavoured to harmonise the proofs of God's power 
in universal law with His wisdom and benevolence. 
It is nevertheless possible that on such a subject our 
speculations may be wholly wrong ; the views which 
I have given may involve some huge mistake. If 
such be the case, may God forgive them, and overrule 
the errors for His honour! We search for truth; 
but when we attempt to lift the veil of the spiri- 
tual without the aid of the voice from the unseen, 
we grope well nigh in vain : — 

" As infants crying in the night, 
As infants crying for the light, 

And with no language but a cry." 1 

Yet I hope that we have arrived at a nobler and 
more cheerful view of Providence than those Stoics 
and Epicureans held, to whom St. Paul proclaimed 
that God is not far from every one of us. For we 

1 Tennyson's " In Memoriam," p. 77. 
f -2 



68 



GENERAL LAWS. 



SERM. II. 



have wished to think of nature's laws only as God's 
mode of working ; and their invariability as the un- 
changeableness of His all-perfect government. 1 And 
I have failed to convey to you the meaning which I 
desired, if I do not send you home with the convic- 
tion that even the darkest dispensations of Provi- 
dence are an equal proof of God's love with the 
brightest ; that the sufferer in his deepest moment of 
gloom is as much the object of his Maker's care as 
when abounding in joy. The Divine Being sees that 
mourner, for He is not far from any of us ; and if 
He sees wise in his Providence not to suspend the 
law which brings the suffering, that absence (to 
speak after the manner of men) of interference is 
not neglect. He is really bestowing his care. The 
sufferer is under the Providence of a personal God. 
Oh ! it is a joyous thought that yon Englishwomen 
who were lately martyred for their country's honour 
in the far East were as much the objects of God's 
care, though He wrought no miracle to protect them 
from the fierceness of human passion, as their sisters 
who land on our shores daily with their tale of woe 
and their grateful hymn of deliverance. Yon soldiers, 
whose memory is so dear to us, who in the assault of 
our enemy's stronghold, 2 paid with their lives for the 

1 See " Dialogues on Providence, by a Fellow of a College," a 
little work, very original and suggestive. 

2 Delhi, recently taken when this Sermon was preached. 



SERM. II. 



GENERAL LAWS. 



69 



noble prize of victory which their country has won, 
were as much the object of their Maker's care, though 
His hand warded not from them the stroke of death, 
as their comrades, whom we shall welcome back to 
our land, waving in triumph the colours which they 
proudly followed to victory. It is a joyous lesson 
to learn from this contemplation of God's general 
laws, that, suffer what we may, and die where we 
may, the suffering is not directed by chance. It is 
not inflicted on us capriciously ; its infliction is a 
proof of love ; for it is part of a great system which 
is guided by a Being all-powerful and all-loving. It 
comes from His hand. Though myriads of links 
in the chain of causation may separate us from 
Him, yet it is His act, His personal act, the expres- 
sion of His all-perfect will, " for in Him we live, and 
move, and have our being." 

Surely, brethren, under this light, the consideration 
of general Providence has led us to the same result 
of a resigned spirit which the Scripture inculcates, 
and the same confidence which it inspires. 

iSor is it necessary to add one word more, save to 
remind you that besides this general Providence of 
which we have spoken, there is another system taught 
us in the Bible (if indeed it be not rather in some 
incomprehensible manner a portion of the same), — 
a system perhaps in itself as general, yet suited 
to every need, directed by one who knows human 

F 3 



70 



GENERAL LAWS. 



SERM. II 



wants ; for it is administered by the God-man Jesus. 
Here we can take our refuge. When I think of those 
laws of absolute generality which nature shows me, I 
tremble sometimes lest I may be overlooked ; but 
when I remember that in Jesus there is a human 
nature mingled with the divine, I feel sure that He 
is a being who knows what special wants mean, 
who can be touched with human sensibility, and 
can remember the woes and temptations of human 
infirmity. 

What a blessed and amazing thought! Yonder 
on the throne there sits this God-man. Within the 
very shrine of the eternal glory, He has mounted up 
to plead for sinful men. Yonder, by the side of the 
Infinite One, who holds in the compass of His laws 
of infinite generality the infinity of the visible and 
invisible creation, is one conscious of our needs and 
touched with our infirmities. 

Yes ! we know that we are as much the object of 
that Saviour's mercy as though this universe were 
empty of all inhabitants but ourselves. He knows 
what we need. He cannot be perplexed by multi- 
plicity, nor confounded by minuteness. Therefore, 
we may leave all confidently in His hands, committing 
ourselves to Him in prayer ; and though we may have 
to wait for the dawn of the eternal morning to 
illumine some of the dark passages of His Providence, 
yet we may rest confident of His power, His wisdom, 



S£KM. II. 



GENERAL LAWS. 



71 



and His goodness. He is omnipotent to save us 
because He is God. He is willing to help us inas- 
much as He is man. 

" I cannot always trace the way 

Wherein the Almighty One doth move ; 
But I can always, always say, 
That God is love." 



Note 

On Special Providence. 

The following is a brief outline of the Sermon on this subject, 
which was designed to follow the preceding one : — 

First an investigation, conducted historically, into the teaching 
of Scripture on the subject would have been given. 

Then, a sketch of the schools of thought, in which the doc- 
trine of Special Providence has been denied, with illustrations 
of their influence on literature, as, e.g. in the poetry of Pope. 

Next, an investigation of theories, which have been supposed 
to suggest a reconciliation of the doctrine with the existence of 
general laws, such as (a) the Monadic theory of Leibnitz ; with 
illustrations, showing how modern physical investigations, by 
resolving various supposed forms of matter into power, seem to 
lend support to something like his theory ; and (/3) the machine 
theory of Babbage's " Bridgewater Treatise." 

After criticism on these attempts at explanation, it was proposed 
to examine whether the Scripture teaching must be surrendered, 
as merely a human or Jewish point of view ; and to show that 
such is not the case, by offering tests to distinguish the human 
from the Divine element in the inspired teaching of Scripture. 

Thus, assuming that we must believe with equal confidence in 
general laws on the evidence of science, and Special Providence 

r 4 



72 



GENERAL LAWS. 



SERM- II. 



on the evidence of the teaching of Holy Scripture, it was pro- 
posed to examine this apparent paradox, investigating the ideas 
of Mr. Mansel (at that time only inferred from his metaphysical 
works, and from his tract on " Eternity," but now so ably 
exhibited in his " Bampton Lectures") — ideas which are in 
part an application of Kant's philosophy, — which would make 
such a paradox to arise from the incapacity of the human 
mind to comprehend such an object, not from real contradiction 
in the object known. 

After this investigation, it was intended to suggest the pos- 
sibility of a system of moral providence revealed in Scripture, 
as actual part of the system of physical providence, developed 
in science, harmonious with it, and not contradictory to it. 

Lastly, some notice would have been taken of the fallacy by 
which persons conceive of a general law, as if it had an existence 
apart from the individual instances which make it up. This fallacy, 
an offshoot of the ancient Realism, besets the human mind alike in 
its conception of general laws in nature, and of God's govern- 
ment in the Christian Church. The body of the Church has no 
more existence apart from its members, than a general law has 
apart from the instances which exemplify it. Part of the confu- 
sion in regarding laws of nature as being distinct from God's 
working in nature, seems attributable to this fault of giving real 
existence to human generalisations. 

The Sermon was not preached, partly because of the long 
interval of many months which intervened before the opportunity 
occurred for it ; and partly because, in the meantime, Mr. Mansel, 
in the 6th of his " Bampton Lectures," had sufficiently inves- 
tigated the subject and preoccupied the ground. 



SERMON III. 



DIVINE BENEVOLENCE IN THE ECONOMY OF PAIN. 
(Preached before the University, February 13th, 1859 ) 



Genesis xlvii. 8, 9. 

And Pharaoh said unto Jacob, How old art thou f 
And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years 
of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years ; 
few and evil have the days of the years of my life 
been, and have not attained unto the days of the 
years of the life of my fathers in the days of their 
pilgrimage. 

These words record a scene which thought might 
well love to dwell upon, and art to depict, even if the 
lesson to be learned from the view of life contained 
in them were less valuable than it is. 

The scene is a striking one, — the interview of a 
Hebrew shepherd chieftain of the desert, with the 
haughty Pharaoh, monarch of the first empire of his 
time. It carries us back to an age of the world which 



74 



THE ECONOMY OF PAIN. 



SEBM. ILL. 



it is hard to realise in thought, which has almost left 
no traces of its power in the remains of its public 
works, and seems well-nigh to live alone in the 
interesting narrative of the Book of Genesis. We are 
accustomed to reproduce to ourselves the image of 
the greatness of Egj^pt by reconstructing in our 
minds, and re-peopling with their ancient proprietors, 
those temple palaces whose gigantic porches, or 
curious columns, or beauteously graven obelisks still 
adorn the banks of the Egyptian stream. Yet all 
these, old though they be, are subsequent to the age 
of Jacob. In order to conceive of the Egypt which 
Jacob visited, and of the Pharaoh to whom Jacob 
was introduced, we must go back in thought to a time 
still older, a period when the art of carving obelisks, 
and of erecting porticos was yet unknown, 1 and when 
the people passed their lives in houses of wood, and 
entombed their ancestors in massive pyramids, which 
outlive the changes of nearly forty centuries. Those 
pyramids, which now look down in gloomy magnifi- 
cence on the desert scorched into barrenness around 
them, around whose massive bases hardly a sound of 
animate life is now heard to break the everlasting 
silence of the desert waste, stood (it is now understood 
from their inscriptions, in spite of the opinion of the 

1 The obelisks and porticos chiefly belong to the great age of 
Egyptian art of the 18th and 19th dynasties. See Fergusson's 
Handbook of Architecture," vol. i. b. v. ch. 1, 2. 



SERM. III. 



THE ECONOMY OF. PAIN. 



75 



Greek historian 1 ) in the days of Jacob as they stand 
now ; and if we measure their magnificence, and then 
strew the desert plain with the traces of active 
industry and the bustle of a thriving population, we 
may be able to form to ourselves some notion of the 
scene which must have presented itself to that 
patriarch when he came into the country over which 
his son Joseph was minister ; we can reconstruct 
from these fragments some idea of the Egypt of 
Jacob's day. 

As the relics of Egyptian architecture enable us 
to picture to ourselves the Pharaoh who was one of 
the characters of the interview narrated in our text, 
so the unchanging characteristics of the shepherd 
life of the Arabian and Mesopotamian deserts repro- 
duce to us the external features of life and manners 
of the Hebrew patriarch who was ushered into the 
Pharaoh's presence. We can imagine to ourselves 
the bearing of the shepherd chieftain, accustomed 
from childhood to the wandering pastoral life ; his 
head hoary with age ; his countenance bronzed with 
exposure to weather, and furrowed in deep lines, 
which told with unmistakeable clearness their tale of 

1 Herodotus (ii. 125) attributes the erection of the Pyramids to 
a period hardly earlier than B.C. 1000. The monumental evidence 
shows that they were the work of the 4th dynasty, which, accord- 
ing to the most moderate computation, must be some centuries 
before the time of Abraham. See Rawlinson's " Herodotus," 
vol. ii. ch. viii. p. 344, &c. 



76 



THE ECONOMY OF PAIN. seem. iii. 



hardship and trial ; his manner dignified by the con- 
scious self-respect which belonged to one who had 
long been the chieftain of a potent tribe, carrying the 
modest but manly consciousness of the liberty of a 
child of the desert, even in the servile court of the 
Egyptian autocrat. 

Such is the scene. The city, perhaps, of Memphis ; 
the court of a Pharaoh, surrounded by his attendants 
on the one hand ; and the venerable shepherd patri- 
arch on the other. A son of that old shepherd, now 
prime minister of the Egyptian kingdom, himself 
long ago transformed, to all appearance, into an 
Egyptian, in every respect, save in the filial afiec- 
tion for his ancestry which still throbbed within him, 
disdains not to introduce that old man into the sove- 
reign's presence. Let us listen to the interview : 
" And Joseph brought in Jacob his father, and set 
him before Pharaoh, and Jacob blessed Pharaoh. 
And Pharaoh said unto Jacob, How old art thou ? 
And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years 
of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years ; 
few and evil have the days of the years of my life 
been, and have not attained unto the days of the 
years of the life of my fathers in the days of their 
pilgrimage. And Jacob blessed Pharaoh, and went 
out from before Pharaoh." 

There is something very natural, very fresh, in the 
words which Jacob used, " The days of the years of 



sekm. in. THE ECONOMY OF PAIN. 77 

my pilgrimage." They were precisely the idea of 
life which would present itself to one accustomed to 
no regular home, but wont to move his encampment 
from spot to spot to find pasturage for his flocks and 
herds. Life would seem to him eminently " a pil- 
grimage," a sojourn. Also, the complaint, " Few and 
evil have the days of the years of my life been," is 
just the kind of plaintive, melancholy utterance of 
an aged man, with life behind him, a scene of sor- 
row, and nothing but death and gloom before him. 
They quite express the kind of regret which an old 
man would feel, the retrospect which in all ages a 
thoughtful mind would take of its past life ; but 
which would come forth especially from a man like 
Jacob, whose life had been unusually chequered with 
evil, — evil which he had done, — evil which he had 
witnessed, — evil which he had suffered. And we 
can well imagine that in those long years of solitary 
sorrow, in which he had mourned the entombment of 
his earthly happiness, when he had buried his loved 
Rachel beneath the pillar in Ramah, and the sad end, 
as he supposed, of his son Joseph, one of the two 
children which we learn from the narrative seemed 
to him the relics bequeathed to him from their 
lamented mother 1 , he had employed the leisure of 
a shepherd's life and the inactivity of age in the sad 

1 Gen. xxxv. 18 ; xlii. 36; xliii. 14. 



78 



THE ECOXOMY OF PAW. 



SERM. III. 



but serious view of life which found its instinctive 
utterance in Pharaoh's presence ; when, in answer 
to the monarch's question, u How old art thou ? " he 
was unable to reply without leaving on record, in 
words whose plaintiveness touches us even at this 
distance of time, his sad experience of human life, 
" Few and evil have the days of the years of my life 
been." 

We have now dwelt, I should hope, long enough 
in thought on that ancient interview to realise it 
vividly to ourselves, and to enter into the feeling 
expressed in the utterance of the aged patriarch. 
But what religious and moral lesson may we learn 
from it ? The one which I wish to draw is this, to 
fix the mind on that idea of life which Jacob here 
expressed. In his retrospect of it, evil and sorrow 
seemed to outweigh joy and pleasure ; the balance 
was in favour of gloom. 

How completely is the experience of life which the 
patriarch draws from his own personal history con- 
firmed to us, by the testimony which the subsequent 
history of the earth has unfolded to us ; the varied 
events of woe that have arisen in the development 
of the world's mighty drama since that early time ! 
What is the voice of history but a roll written within 
and without, with mourning, lamentation, and woe ? 
What is it but an illustration of the great fact, that 
Providence allows human life to be marked by ago- 



SERM. III. 



THE ECONOMY OF PATX. 



79 



nizing sorrow ? How many evils exist, brought about 
by men — wars, revolutions, cruelty ! How many per- 
mitted by Heaven — poverty, famine, disease, bodily 
infirmities, the catastrophes of accidents, sudden 
deaths ! What can more truly describe the feeling 
of the mind, which looks upon the world's history 
from this point of view, than to exclaim of it as Jacob 
did of his own life, " Evil have the days of the years 
of its life been ? " 

Now, what is the cause of this permitted pain ? 
and how can the existence of such manifold misery 
be reconciled with the idea of a benevolent character 
in the Divine Creator ? It is a very small portion of 
this great subject which can come under our notice 
on the present occasion ; yet I hope that a few con- 
siderations on the use of Pain will at once excite in 
us a reverent feeling towards the Divine Being whose 
government we shall perceive to be guided by mercy, 
even in its forms of terror, and will stir us up to a 
true perception of our own duty alike to our neigh- 
bours and to Him. 

The ideas which I wish to bring before you are 
these, — that though we cannot entirely fathom 
the mystery which is involved in God's permission 
of pain or suffering, yet we can discover in it 
proofs of His mercy, not merely in the very purpose 1 

1 Similar proofs of benevolent arrangements can be shown in 



80 



THE ECONOMY OF PAIN. 



SERM. III. 



of its administration, but in the twofold remedy 
which He has provided for its diminution, in the 
progress of civilisation and in the mission of phi- 
lanthropy and of Christianity. 

It will probably occur to many of you, that pain 
is the effect solely of sin, and therefore that what- 
ever woes mankind may suffer under the economy 
of it, are brought on by their own fault. It is 
indeed true that much of pain is the effect of sin, 
and would never have existed if sin had been absent 
from the earth ; but this does not solve the whole 
mystery ; for there is much pain, it is now clear, 
which is not the effect of sin. The economy of 
suffering is a far grander thing, is part of a far 
grander scheme of God's administration, than we 
are at first led to suppose. Providence has shown 
us, by the discoveries of science in the present 
century, the mysterious fact, which we should not 
otherwise have suspected or guessed at, that pain 
and death existed before the creation of man, — 
before the existence of human sin. 1 

the very nature of its distribution. But the inquiry was too 
physiological to be introduced into the Sermon. Mr. G. A. 
Rowell, of Oxford, has treated this particular aspect of the 
subject in an interesting essay on " The Beneficent Distribution 
of the Sense of Pain." 

1 It will be observed that the truth of the teaching of geo- 
logical theory, in reference to the occurrence of death ante- 
cedently to the creation of man, is here assumed. Indeed it can 



SERM. III. 



THE ECONOMY OF PAIN. 



81 



It used to be conceived that about six thousand 
years ago the Almighty's creative fiat first broke in 
upon the stillness which existed in universal na- 
ture, and evoked from nothingness this globe, and 
strewed the sky with the orbs which are scattered in 
glittering millions, and decked this earth with plants, 
and peopled it with animals for the use of man. It 
is now known that this opinion is not correct, and 
that the narrative which was supposed to tell us so, 
can at most refer only to the preparation of the earth 
for the use of man, and not to its original construc- 
tion. The first origin of creation must be placed 
back at a period indefinitely remote. Through a 
succession of ages and cycles, the profusion of God's 
creative hand gave life to myriads of species of animals 
and plants, before His boundless love suggested the 
thought, " Let us make man after our image." The 
science which has explored the rocks of the world, 
has deciphered in them the written history of God's 
government of this planet in ages upon ages, anterior 
to human history. The whole earth is one huge 
sepulchre of the remains of former worlds. The mar- 
vellous fact upon which I am wishing now to dwell, is 
this, that in those ages when man was not, and when 
the fish of the sea, or huge reptiles of the marshes, 

now not be doubted by any educated person. A note is, however, 
appended to the present Sermon, to dissipate some objections 
which are still taken against geological science. 

G 



82 



THE ECONOMY OF PAIN. 



SEEM. JII. 



or the gigantic mammoths of the forest, were the sole 
lords of the planet which now forms man's habitation ; 
when accordingly there was no sin, because the 
irrational animals were incapable of sinning, yet pain 
existed there and death likewise 1 , and those great 

1 Though we may rest unhesitatingly in this truth, proved by 
irrefragable evidence, and may feel sure that the method of recon- 
ciling it with previously known truths will hereafter suggest itself, 
yet, as many conscientious men feel a difficulty in accepting it in 
consequence of its contradiction both to St. Paul's statement (in 
Horn. v. 12), "By one man sin entered into the world, .and death 
by sin ; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have 
sinned ;" and to the statement in the book of Genesis (iii. 17), 
" Cursed is the ground for thy sake," it seems fair to them to 
enumerate some of the modes which have been suggested for the 
reconciliation of the discrepancy. These modes are by sup- 
posing : — (1st.) that though death belonged to the animal king- 
dom before the existence of sin, yet its extension to mankind 
was a judgment for human sin ; — (2nd.) that the pre-existence 
of death and deterioration was arranged by Providence, with a 
view to the future existence of human sin, foreseen by the Divine 
prescience ; so that the world, according to this view, was really 
pre-arranged for the residence of fallen, not of pure beings, — an 
idea to which St. Paul's hint, that " the Lamb was slain before 
the foundation of the world," might be supposed to lend coun- 
tenance; — (3rd.) that as St. Paul is employing a process of argu- 
mentation in the passage cited, the same weight of inspiration need 
not reasonably be assigned to his arguments as to his positive au- 
thoritative statements; inspiration, according to this view, residing 
in the elevation of the intuitional, not of the logical faculty; — (4th.) 
that St. Paul may be regarded as merely repeating and reasoning 
on the Jewish view, according to the best information possessed 
at that time, before God had taught to man, through the revela- 
tion of uninspired science, a grander truth on this subject than 
He had vouchsafed to communicate to the Jews through the 
revelation of inspired messengers. This latter view would not 



SERM. nr. 



THE ECONOMY OF PAIN". 



83 



physical catastrophes, such as earthquake and vol- 
canic eruptions, which destroy animal life, were 
also abundant. 1 To adduce only one instance as 
proof. In many spots of the earth slabs of rock 
are dug up which contain the remains of delicate 
fishes which existed long antecedently to human 
history; their beautiful little forms being stamped 
upon them, still contorted in the agonies in which 
they expired. 2 

What do these facts teach us ? They reveal to us 
this amazing truth, that the economy of pain, which 
we had thought to appertain to man, and to be the 
effect of sin, is part of a much larger scheme of 
Divine Providence, extending backwards to times of 

deny the authority of Scripture, but only imply degrees of in- 
spiration in its teaching. 

1 The destruction of animal life by earthquakes, such as those 
which raised mountains, or produced the dislocations usually 
called " faults," is an inference ; but that which was produced by 
volcanic eruptions is a fact proved by the existence of molluscous 
remains in the tufa of volcanoes of the tertiary age, both in 
central Italy and in Auvergne. The existence also of such cata- 
strophes as sudden outbursts of poisonous vapour in the ancient 
seas, is the most probable supposition for explaining the aggrega- 
tion of fossil remains of the same family, as e.g. of Belemnites, in 
some parts of the Lias ; as if a shoal of fish had been destroyed 
by some sudden cause in the ocean, and entombed in its depths. 

2 Fossil fishes are frequently found ; but it is in the remains of 
those discovered at Solenhofen, in Bavaria, that the contortions 
are most distinctly marked. They are found there in a schistose 
limestone, probably cotemporary with the upper oolites of our 
own country. See Lyell's " Manual of Geology," ch. 20. 

G 2 



84 



THE ECONOMY OF PAIN. 



SEKM. III. 



which we had no conception, and designed for pur- 
poses larger than we had imagined. Science has in 
fact, in this case, become a revelation. 1 It has ad- 
vanced our knowledge, not only of Nature, but of the 
system and purposes of God in ruling Nature ; and I 
have ventured thus to allude to it, because it is most 
desirable that the minds of our students should be 
freshened by acquaintance with the discoveries of 
Science, and that they should not go forth into life to 
propagate errors which are exploded among the edu- 
cated, nor should receive the first information of 
their mistake from the harsh satire of some stubborn 
critic. Let us rather hail Science as a handmaid to 
religion. The inspired Bible is the revelation of God's 
scheme of mercy in Christ ; uninspired Science is a 
revelation of God's majesty in Nature, surpassing in 
this respect the former, in unfolding the mightiness 
of His ways, and in enlarging our conceptions of the 
infinity of His purposes. And, therefore, we may 
take the facts to which I have alluded, as a proof that 
though some pain is doubtless the effect of man's sin, 
yet the government of God by pain is part of a 
wider scheme, of which, perhaps, we can hardly sus- 
pect the purpose. 

So far as we are able to guess at its object, we may 

1 Compare the remarks on this subject in Sermon I. of this 
volume (pp. 25 — 31). ' 



SERM. III. 



THE ECONOMY OF PAIN. 



85 



assert that the economy of pain is an economy of 
discipline. It appertains to a being that is in a 
state of progress; and so, instead of seeming to be 
cruelty, it is really mercy, because it is a lesson in- 
culcating prudence and inducing improvement. Two 
instances will illustrate this. 1 If the little shell- 
fish which enjoys its life in the warm waters of a 
tropical clime possessed no sense of biting pain at 
the presence of cold, what should hinder it from 
allowing itself to be drifted by the ocean's currents 
to those colder waters for which its organism is 
unsuited ? If the wild beast of the forest felt no 
sense of pain as its hairy skin is lacerated by the 
sharp branches of trees among which it rushes, 
what should prevent it from consummating the 
destruction of the very covering which was in- 
tended to protect it against alternations of climate? 
The endowment of pain is a real kindness ; it is the 
sentinel to warn against danger. If it be a punish- 
ment, it is only intended as a lesson against future 
imprudence, against the recurrence of the conduct 
which produces the pain. We claim it, therefore, 
as a proof of God's mercy that he has thus imparted 
to sentient beings a beacon to warn them against 
peril ; and we cannot but suppose that it must have 
been some purpose of this kind, which was intended 

1 These two instances are borrowed from Mr. Theodore Parker's 
Sermons on the " Economy of Pain." (Sermons IX. and X.) 

g 3 



86 



THE ECONOMY OF PAIN. 



SERM. III. 



by the distribution of pain in those early ages of 
creation to which allusion has been made. 

We might extend to the case of man the illus- 
trations drawn from the lower orders of the animal 
kingdom. When, however, we thus pass from the 
merely sentient animals to the consideration of beings 
possessed of a higher nervous organisation, and en- 
dowed with the attributes of reason, conscience, and 
responsibility, we naturally, as we should expect, find 
the capacity of feeling pain to be vastly enhanced, 
but designed with the same purpose of mercy. 
For the pain is commensurate with the discipline ; it 
is a signal warning against harm or wrong ; and as 
the discipline of man is more extended, his powers 
greater > his means of wrongly acting enlarged, so his 
capacity of feeling pain is also extended. He not 
only feels it in body, but experiences the pangs of 
mental misery, the lashings of remorse, the tortures 
of conscience. Yet these are mercy. They are all 
designed to deter from the repetition of the im- 
prudence or the sin; they are intended as a warn- 
ing to others who see the effects, that they may 
learn a lesson by example, without having to buy 
instruction through their own experience. 

When the imprudence of a mariner dashes the 
vessel on the rocks, or when, through the neglect of 
common precautions as to health, a pestilence fastens 
on the plague-spot of a city, or the explosion of some 



seem. in. THE ECONOMY OF PAIN. 87 



dangerous factory maims or massacres scores of un- 
offending bystanders, there seems at first no mercy 
in these judgments of pain inflicted on the inno- 
cent ; but when we consider what lessons they are 
intended to teach, they too are in their tendencies 
really mercy. It is only severe lessons like these 
which arouse men from a motive of personal safety 
to remedy the evils which imprudence or neglect has 
created. Thus, even in chastisement there is mercy ; 
even in the dark and mysterious economy of pain 
there is proof that a God of love is ruling. 

Yet the remarks which have been made, apply 
only to that pain and suffering which is remedial ; 
what shall be said of the amount of suffering per- 
mitted in God's providence, which comes upon man 
by no fault of his own, and which he is powerless to 
avert ? A city lies sparkling in beauty : suddenly a 
low rumble is heard ; it grows louder as it ap- 
proaches ; and when it is at hand, the city rocks 
like a ship labouring in a storm ; the buildings 
crumble into heaps ; and the glorious city, which a 
few minutes before was busy and bright with life, 
is a mass of ruins, with thousands of its population 
buried in its fall. The patient mariners, after brav- 
ing many a danger, are in sight of the haven where 
they would be : but a storm of the ocean overtakes 
them ; the vessel founders ; and their last breath of 
agony is heard gurgling on the surface of the deep 

* 4 



88 



THE ECONOMY OF PAIN. 



SERM. III. 



as they sink into its abyss. The toiling collier shall 
be digging in his subterranean city : some accident 
ignites the inflammable gas which issues forth from 
the coal-rock; the flame sweeps with devouring rush 
through the close galleries of the mine, and strews 
those dark caves with the corpses of innocent sufferers. 
The Divine Being is pleased not to suspend His 
general laws ; and the general law that, under certain 
circumstances, the earthquake, or the shipwreck, or 
the explosion shall occur, is mysteriously allowed to 
have its course. The contingency comes, the law 
holds on its course, and the catastrophe is the conse- 
quence. 1 What shall we say of these permitted 
horrors ? Can we reconcile them with the idea 
of the government of a God of love? We can in 
some sense do so, — at least so far as we finite beings 
can hope to comprehend the thoughts of the Infinite 
Mind. We assert that benevolence is seen on the 
large scale even here ; we claim that the government 
by a uniform system of general laws is itself an act 
of benevolence. 

It is not necessary to enlarge on this subject, be- 
cause, on a former occasion, I endeavoured to harmo- 
nise the apparent severity of such a plan of govern- 
ment with the idea of benevolence ; and, with the 
view of showing that the amazing wisdom exhibited 
in its construction is itself kindness, I drew an illus- 

1 The ideas of the last few lines are repeated from Sermon II. 



SERM. III. 



THE ECONOMY OF PAIN. 



89 



tration from some of the discoveries of mathematical 
Astronomy. 1 I attempted to make it plain, that 
through calculations conducted by the instrument of 
a refined analysis we arrive at this marvellous result, 
that the Divine Being has impressed a simple law of 
such exquisite perfection upon the heavenly bodies, 
that He has by means of it anticipated the contin- 
gencies which will occur in their disturbances in 
the inconceivably distant depths of future time. 
Are not such consummate wisdom and prescience, 
a manifest proof that the government by general 
laws is an act of benevolence ? The amazing wis- 
dom is itself the benevolence. Thus, though we 
cannot understand the whole mystery of these cata- 
strophes which arise in the operation of such a plan 
of administration, we may be sure that general 
happiness is produced by the arrangement, in spite 
of occasional pain. The earthquake, or the shipwreck, 
or the explosion, produces misery, but the general 
system of wind and weather, and gas and air, diffuses 
general enjoyment ; and therefore, even apart from 
their moral value as lessons, even on the physical 
ground merely, we can show that undeserved pain is 
compatible with the administration of a God of love. 
The means are severe, but the end is beneficent. 
" Therefore, hearken unto me, ye men of under- 



1 See Sermon II., p. 65. 



90 



THE ECONOMY OF PAIN. 



SERM. III. 



standing; far be it from God that he should do 
wickedness ; and from the Almighty that he should 
commit iniquity. Yea, surely God will not do 
wickedly, neither will the Almighty pervert judg- 
ment." 

We have thus learned in the survey alike of the 
pain which is a warning to deter from harm, and 
of that which is permitted to occur in the ordinary 
operations of nature's laws, that even the dark dis- 
pensations are an equal proof of God's love with the 
brightest, that even the mysterious economy of pain 
is an evidence of God's benevolence. 1 

But we have not yet exhausted the proof of God's 
mercy in this dispensation of severity. We have, 
indeed, seen its benevolent purpose and tendency ; 
but we should also take into account that God has 
been pleased to institute two agencies which especially 
tend to diminish pain, and make it effect the moral 
purpose designed in it. One of these agencies is the 
benevolence which is called forth by civilisation ; the 
other, the philanthropy which takes its rise in Chris- 
tianity. 

1 Pain seems to be various in origin. (1), It arises from the 
operation of general laws ; (2), it is corrective ; (3), it is de- 
signed to test character, as in the case of Job ; (4), it is 
perhaps occasionally retributive. The two former branches 
only have been discussed above. Some hints for the discus- 
sion of the third may be found in an able article on the book 
of Job in the Westminster Eeview for October, 1853. 



sekm. in. THE ECONOMY OF PAIX. 91 

It may create a momentary surprise to hear of the 
relief of pain being the effect of civilisation ; for 
experience so often compels us rather to associate 
the idea of selfishness with that acquisition of wealth 
which marks a growing civilisation, and heart- 
sickening despotism with political centralisation. 
Yet we shall perceive that it is so, if we look at 
two features which appertain to civilisation, viz. the 
development of medical science, and the growth of 
public opinion. It would be so easy to prove from 
history that the increase of civilisation has favoured, 
nay, necessitated the growth of medical science, that 
we may assume the fact; for my object now is rather 
to regard the art of healing as an instrument in the 
hands of Providence for the alleviation of pain. We 
are accustomed frequently to take only a utilitarian 
view of it ; when, however, we regard it from our pre- 
sent point of view, we must look upon the humblest 
practitioner, in his humblest employment, as an uncon- 
scious instrument in erecting one stone in the great 
temple, which God is building, of human happiness and 
human improvement. And we must also look upon 
the remedies which have been of such inestimable 
blessings to mankind, such as the febrifuge power of 
Peruvian bark, the practice of vaccination, the use of 
anaesthetics, though in themselves, as it were, acci- 
dental discoveries, yet in a higher sense as gifts of 
God, as merciful arrangements of His Providence for 



92 



THE ECONOMY OF PAIN. 



SERM. in. 



the mitigation of suffering. Though they be for- 
tuitous discoveries, yet if it be the special prerogative 
of human civilisation to acquire such knowledge, and 
if it be the inseparable quality which God has given 
to man to attain to civilisation, we are not wrong 
in claiming them as evidences of the government of a 
God of love. 

We may see a similar proof also, if we look at the 
trait of a mature civilisation which is seen in the 
growth of public opinion, and its necessary concomi- 
tant, a free press. If we turn our thoughts to the 
state of our own country at this moment, we perceive 
that there is not a wrong, nor a supposed wrong 
of the most insignificant kind, which fails to excite 
through the free press of England public attention 
and sympathy. The event may be in itself slight, 
yet it is felt not to be a trifle, because it involves a 
principle. It may be some bodily hurt of a poor 
person, or it may be some insidious attempt to 
obstruct public progress, or to sap the foundation 
of our liberty and our national independence ; in 
either case Englishmen take it up, because they feel 
that the trouble is theirs. If the one member suffer* 
they know that all the members suffer. The hurt at 
one extreme limb of the body politic is telegraphed 
throughout the whole of its mysterious organism, 
and each sinew and each nerve beats responsive to 
the pain impressed on the distant member. The 



SEKM. III. 



THE ECONOMY OF PAIX. 



93 



very exaggeration, the occasional abuse of this public 
sympathy, proves its power and its value. If here, 
again, we see that public sympathy is the effect of 
freedom, and freedom the effect of civilisation, and 
civilisation the gift of God's general providence, let 
us not omit to recognise in every act of sympathy 
which responds to the complaints of suffering, the 
pulsations of the personal will, the expression of 
the mind of love, which directs the first links of 
that chain, some of whose windings, as we see them 
in the tangled mass of human society, we have been 
attempting to trace. 

Yet it is not merely in the benevolence of a 
growing civilisation that we notice the merciful 
arrangements of Heaven for the mitigation of pain ; 
we trace it much more in the mission of Christianity. 
Our holy religion is the reflection of the mission 
of its Divine author ; He has left us an example that 
we should follow in His steps : and His mission was 
one of universal mercy, not to soul only but to body. 
In His journeyings over Judea, wherever he saw 
misery, physical as well as moral, He scattered it by 
the breath of His miraculous power. He bore our 
sicknesses, and carried our sorrows. And as He 
acted so did also His apostles. From the very 
moment when their souls were baptized with the 
Pentecostal gifts, so that they understood what 
Christ's atoning death had wrought for them, and felt 



94 



THE ECONOMY OF PAIN. 



SERM III. 



the holy love of God and of man stirred up within 
them by His Holy Spirit, they hastened to go forth 
on their mission of love. And not Apostles only, but 
humble members of the Christian Church counted it 
their highest privilege to minister to their fellows. 
So also, as the circles of Christian influence widened,in- 
stitutions unthought-of by heathens, were established 
for the relief of sorrow and the mitigation of suffering. 
The statesmen and monarchs of the ancient world 
constructed many works of public utility, but none 
directly adapted to the cure of disease. The ruins 
of their aqueducts still span wide valleys with their 
gigantic arches ; their baths for the poor 1 , now 
crumbling in ruined majesty, form some of the most 
colossal and beautiful remains of the Eternal City ; 
but no philosopher was ever led by his science, no 
statesman by his generosity, to construct hospitals, or 
a system of relief for the diseased. It was when He 
who had suffered as a man sent His Spirit down to 
melt the hard hearts of men into overflowing love, 
that the thoughts of visiting and assisting the sick 
first entered into the hearts of men to conceive. 

And in various ages the most conspicuous exam- 
ples of heroic and enduring self-sacrifice have ap- 
peared in the muster-roll of those who have endea- 
voured to carry out the secular mission of Chris- 

1 E. g. those of Caracalla and Diocletian. 



SERM. III. 



THE ECONOMY OF PAIN. 



95 



tianity — its relief of pain. We need not go back to 
past times, and recall the memory of a Borromeo 
ministering to the population of Milan when smitten 
by pestilence, nor a Vincent de Paul sending forth 
the missionary sisters into ravaged Lorraine, nor a 
Howard, in his circumnavigation of charity, collating 
the distresses of all men. Our own age, our own 
memory, will supply to us conspicuous instances where 
practical Christianity has fulfilled its mission of 
plunging into the infection of hospitals, and diving 
into the abodes of sorrow. There is one recent scene 
in our national history which finds its place in the 
annals of the Christian mission of mercy ; there is 
one spot on earth whither the philanthropist may 
take a pilgrimage to kindle his own energies. And 
as he gazes on the hillocks which mark the last 
resting-place of English heroes, and drops his tear of 
sympathy to the memory of those who bought with 
their lives the noble prize of victory for the country 
which they loved so well, his sympathy must kindle 
into intense energy as he turns to gaze on that huge 
square edifice that overlooks the silent cemetery, 
which has been consecrated by the presence of those 
Christian heroines who bent over the pillow and 
soothed the last moments of their countrymen who 
expired in the plague-struck hospital of Scutari. 

Here we may see how truly Christianity still car- 
ries out its mission of healing ; and in the spirit of 



96 



THE ECONOMY OF PAIN. 



SERM. III. 



this example we may fitly conclude our subject : for 
we have traced in the economy of pain the proof of 
God's benevolence, not only in the suffering which is 
the punishment of imprudence, and in that which 
comes upon us without our own fault, but also in the 
perpetual system which He has provided for the 
mitigation of sorrow in the benevolence of civilisation, 
and the philanthropic mission of Christianity. 

Nor can this view have failed to exhibit to us our 
own duty alike to our neighbours and to ourselves. 
We must have felt that in mitigating the slightest- 
pain in the most insignificant creature of God's sen- 
tient creation, we are co-workers with God, we are 
doing our part in the system in which He has placed 
us ; in diminishing human suffering in the least degree, 
or adding to the stock of human happiness, we are 
following the footsteps of Him who Himself was the 
great example of the dignity of condescension, of the 
majesty of sympathy, of the divinity of pity. 

It is a very cheering circumstance that the 
Christianity of our age is becoming awake to this its 
secular mission, — its mission to the bodies of men as 
well as to their souls, its mission of civilisation as 
well as its errand of religion. It was the lesson of 
this kind which all felt that they had to learn, which 
not long since bespoke the sympathies of admiring 
England for the labours of the missionary explorer 1 , 
1 The Rev. D. Livingstone. 



SERM, III 



THE ECONOMY OF PAIN. 



97 



who, after receiving from his grateful countrymen his 
well-merited honours, has gone back with the un- 
affected simplicity which was the sweetest trait in his 
noble character, to bestow his labour of love in 
carrying up the streams of the African continent the 
seeds of incipient civilisation, as the pioneer of in- 
dustry, the harbinger of the bright day of improve- 
ment which shall in distant time spread its refresh- 
ment over the arid plains of the African continent. 
When that first labourer shall have passed to his 
reward (distant, God grant, may be the day), his 
name shall be blessed; though he may rest from 
his labours, his works shall follow him. 

But his example ought to animate us at home. 
For if we would find barbarians outside of the 
pale of civilisation, and beings degraded below the 
level of humanity, we have no need to go to search 
for them among the roving Bosjemen of the Calahari 
desert \ we may find them nearer home, in the 
crowded English cities, amid the lazzaroni of our 
metropolis, amid the hopeless, homeless outcasts of 
yon great London. And if we would reach these 
with mercy, we must first feed them ; if we would 
Christianise them, we must first unbrutalise them ; 
if we would reach their souls, we must begin with 
their bodies ; if we would hope to teach them 
religion, we must accompany it or precede it by 

1 Livingstone's " Travels," ch. v. 
H 



98 



THE ECONOMY OF PAIN. 



SERM. III. 



attention to public health and comfort. Tracts, 
and Bibles, and Clergy will do little, unless we afford 
also fresh air, and clean water, and wholesome 
food, and warm fuel, and healthful recreation, and 
the commonest rudiments of God's blessed gift 
of civilisation. We must sacrifice for once those 
political practices (true though they are in the main) 
which the teaching of Malthus caused to be embodied 
in public law ; we must come forward as a nation to 
help those who cannot and will not help themselves. 
We must purify the public drainage, and erect public 
lavatories, and build decent cottages wherein the 
sanctities of domestic life may find a shrine, without 
the herding together of persons, like brute beasts, 
without respect of age, or person, or sex, if we would 
wish to use God's method of elevating men, or 
would desire our religious efforts for their good to be 
anything but a mighty, heart-sickening mockery. 1 

Yet while we are learning this lesson of duty to 
our neighbour, let us not omit to learn also one in 
reference to ourselves. While we are labouring in 
our sphere to diminish human sorrow as well as 

1 It is undoubtedly true that under ordinary circumstances 
Christianity precedes rather than succeeds civilisation. Religion 
begins from within and works outwards, first making the heart 
right, and then afterwards the life. Missions civilise by the very 
act of Christianising. But in extreme cases of degradation, such as 
abound in our larger towns, religious influences are rendered 
abortive unless assisted by civilisation. 



SF.RM. III. 



THE ECONOMY OF PAIN. 



99 



human sin, let us not fail to realise the deep lesson 
which the sight of that sorrow ought to teach us, 
of unworldliness and of preparation for the future 
world. Let us not fail to feel that this life is verily 
a pilgrimage, a sojourn; that we are placed here to 
seize the few moments to prepare ourselves for 
another world, and that the evil of this life may be 
our very best preparation for the future, if only 
we are victorious through the help of Him who 
has loved us. We must learn to feel that here all is 
fleeting, there all eternal ; here the shadow, there the 
substance ; here the dream, there the awaking ; here 
all marred and imperfect, and unable to satisfy the 
deep cravings of our immortal souls, there all blessed 
perfection, and God and goodness as the everlasting 
fountain and satisfaction of our intensest appetitions. 
Then we shall use the world without abusing it, and 
live here as heirs of immortality. And the strength 
of that conviction will make us tremble, lest, when we 
have entered on that other state of being, when return 
to this life is impossible, when our souls are stamped 
with an everlasting destiny, when he that is unholy 
must be unholy still, we should find that we have 
made an everlasting mistake, that we have allowed 
ourselves to be cheated by the dream of life, hurried 
away by its gaieties, bound down by its business, 
and have neglected to use its opportunities to se- 
cure a fitness for a home above. Let us learn 

H 2 



100 



THE ECONOMY OF PAIIST. 



SERM. III. 



this lesson, and carry it out in our lives. While 
we consecrate our efforts to bless our fellows, let us 
gather ourselves in the secresy of earnest prayer to 
our common Father, and seek that He would keep 
before our souls the vision of the eternal world, and 
make our lives the means of preparing us for it. 
Let us ask the mercy which is free as the air we 
breathe to all who ask it in the merits of Christ, let 
us crave His help against sin, and His favour, which 
no one ever yet asked in vain. Then, if we do so, 
we may well hope, that, as the evening of life closes 
around us, and we are ready to lament with the 
ancient patriarch, " Few and evil have been the days 
of the years of my life," we shall, in the recollection 
of a life well spent, catch a prospect in the future, a 
bright home beyond the dark valley of the shadow of 
death ; and that with consolation cheering us such as 
fell upon him in his last moments, our souls may 
pass away from earth with the joyous thought : "I 
have waited for thy salvation, Lord." 

" Life, I repeat, is energy of love, 
Divine or human ; exercised in pain, 
In strife, or tribulation ; and ordained, 
If so approved and sanctified, to pass 
Through shades, and silent rest, to endless joy." 1 



Wordsworth's " Excursion," b. v. end. 



SERM. III. 



THE ECONOMY OF PAIN. 



101 



Note 

On the Evidence of Geology. 

It is hardly necessary, considering the manner in which a 
knowledge of Geological discovery now enters into the education 
of all cultivated persons, to add remarks on the irrefragable cha- 
racter of the evidence of those discoveries; yet some objections 
to them deserve notice, which exist in the minds of those whose 
reverence for old truths inclines them to adopt any excuse for 
declining to accept new ones. 

These objections are, (1st,) that the phenomena of fossil re- 
mains can be entirely explained by a general deluge, without 
assuming the existence of death antecedently to the creation of 
man; and (2nd,) that Geology is so young a science, and has 
so often changed its theories, that hesitation in accepting its 
present teaching is excusable. 

The former position cannot be held any longer by any one who 
will put himself to the trouble of examining conscientiously the 
steps of Geological proof ; indeed, the persons who in future 
assert it, must abdicate their claim both to impartiality and intel- 
ligence. 

The latter position, though more plausible, is equally fallacious. 
The cause why Geology has changed its theories is, that the 
discoverers of the science were so conscientious, so afraid to draw 
inferences hastily which would clash with received beliefs, so 
unwilling to admit the new truths which God was teaching them 
through the revelation of science, that they adopted premature 
attempts to adjust old beliefs to new discoveries. Accordingly, 
from time to time they were compelled to throw away some 
element in their conclusions, which fresh investigations showed 
to be no longer tenable. The changes in the theories of Geolo- 
gists have not been those of men who were guessing at random ; 
they have been the uniform progress of minds who had humility 
enough to lay aside their preconceived hypotheses before the 
newly opening visions of truth. 

In reference to the allegation that Geology is a young science, 
it should be remembered that since the establishment of ascer- 
tained methods of investigation and of proof, a science con- 



102 



THE ECONOMY OF PAIN. 



SERM. III. 



structed upon such methods possesses immediately the certainty 
of older sciences, the larger portion of the history of which 
has only been the random attempts at discovery, which were 
made antecedently to the establishment of correct methods. 1 
Bacon said that the method of science would grow together with 
the sciences 2 , — a remark which experience has confirmed. Men 
have, as it were, stumbled upon discoveries, and having done so, 
they have turned back and read in those discoveries the theory of 
the method by which they attained them. They have read in 
science the logical method of scientific discovery, and hence the 
modern inductive logic of scientific method, as shown in the great 
modern writers on the subject 3 , is itself a strictly inductive 
science, a rigorous statement of the methods which have led to 
the verified discoveries in the sciences. 

Hence the allegation that Geology is an uncertain science, 
because a new one, disappears, inasmuch as it is a science founded 
on ascertained methods ; indeed, such a charge is as absurd as if 
a person were to object against some modern astronomical calcula- 
tion that it has been executed too quickly, because the astronomers 
who lived before the perfection of analytical methods of inves- 
tigation, would have taken much longer time in the discovery 
of it. 

1 This is exhibited clearly in Dr. Whewell's "Philosophy of the Inductive 
Sciences," in the chapters where he traces the gradual evolution of scientific 
ideas ; and in Professor Baden Powell's " History of Natural Philosophy." 

2 Nov. Org. B.I., in Jin. 

3 Sir J. Herschel's " Introd. to Nat. Phil.," Part II.; Dr. Whewell's "Philos. 
of Induction ;" Ampere's " Essai sur la Philosophie des Sciences j" Comte's 
" Positive Philosophy ;" Mr. J. S. Mill's " System of Logic." 



103 



SERMON IV. 

JEWISH INTERPRETATION OF PROPHECY. 
(Preached before the University, February 24th, 185G ') 



Isaiah vi. 9. 

And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, 
bat understand not ; and see ye indeed, but perceive 
not. 

These words were spoken in the marvellous vision 
which was vouchsafed to Isaiah at an early stage of 
his prophetic ministry. In the year that King 
Uzziah died, he saw " the Lord sitting upon a throne, 
high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. 
Above it stood the seraphim ; each one had six 
wings ; with twain he covered his face, and with 
twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. 
And one cried unto another and said. Holy, holy, 

1 On occasion of the annual Sermon, designed to refute the 
mediaeval Jewish schools of prophetic interpretation. 

h 4 



104 ON JEWISH LITERATURE. seem. iv. 

holy is the Lord of Hosts ; the whole earth is full of 
his glory. And the posts of the door moved at the 
voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with 
smoke." We cannot wonder that the prophet, con- 
founded with that unearthly manifestation, was over- 
whelmed with dread, and exclaimed : " Woe is me, 
for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, 
and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips." 
But as he uttered his confession, one of the seraphim 
flew unto him, having a live coal in his hand, taken 
from the altar, and laid it upon his mouth, and said : 
" Lo, this hath touched thy lips, and thy iniquity is 
taken away and thy sin purged." And then he was 
warned to go and tell his nation : " Hear ye indeed, 
but understand not ; and see ye indeed, but perceive 
not. Make the heart of this people fat, and make 
their ears heavy, and shut their eyes ; lest they see 
with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and under- 
stand with their heart, and convert, and be healed." 

There can be no doubt that it was a vision sent at 
once to cheer the prophet in his work, and to prepare 
him for it. He was to go to teach his countrymen ; 
but Providence foresaw that they, with the inflexible 
tenacity of character which has ever been their 
marked national peculiarity, would refuse to listen 
to his message. And, therefore, he was given to 
feel that his ministrations, though they were not 
heeded on earth, were not unnoticed in heaven ; that 



SER.vI. IV. 



ON JEWISH LITERATURE. 



105 



unclean as he was, and ministering to a people 
unclean, there was a seraph to fly to him with the 
assurance of mercy ; and that though he might be led 
to think that the course of this world's history was 
for evil, yet the seraphim standing before the throne, 
and surveying things by the light of eternity, were 
chanting their song of triumph to the Holy, Holy, 
Holy, because they were permitted to witness that 
not the heavens only but the earth also, was full 
of God's glory. 

The history of Isaiah's ministrations to the Jewish 
people, has been repeated in every succeeding attempt 
made to bring them to a sense of their true condi- 
tion. One messenger after another has been sent, 
and at last the Divine Son of God came forth. 
He came to His own, but His own received Him 
not. And the result has been that vengeance ap- 
pears to have overtaken them ; their vineyard has 
been taken away and given unto others. 

If there were no other interest belonging to the 
Jewish nation than that which arises from the opera- 
tion of merely ordinary laws in their history, they 
would yet be singled out as one of the most remark- 
able of peoples. The interest which belongs to them 
would indeed be unlike that which appertains to 
other nations. No mystery envelopes their origin, 
such as excites our curiosity with regard to many 
ancient races, which have left in their cities and 



10G 



OX JEWISH LITERATURE. 



SERM. IV. 



their cemeteries, the traces of a civilisation which 
must ever remain an enigma. No widely spread 
influences can be traced to them, such as those 
effects which Athenian cultivation has stamped in- 
delibly on the world. No political example is offered 
in their history, of a people working out its liberties, 
and then imprinting its laws on a conquered world, 
such as gives to Roman history its enduring interest. 
Yet, in spite of the absence of these features, the 
peculiarity of their pertinacity of character, of 
their persecutions, and their continuance as a se- 
parate nation ; scattered through every district of 
the civilised earth, yet not confounded with the 
masses of its population ; strangers where they have 
long had a home ; foreigners where they have long 
been naturalised ; separated by an ineffaceable bar- 
rier from societies with which they hold the clos- 
est companionship ; — these circumstances alone, if 
there were none of different and higher interest, would 
claim for their history and condition the attention 
of all who desire to understand the philosophy of 
man. 

When, however, we superadd to this merely secular 
view of their history the divine aspect which reve- 
lation presents us of it, we feel that it stands out 
singly in the progress of the race. Other histories 
embody ideas ; it is theirs alone which embodies 
divine ideas. They stand out as the instruments of 



SERM. IV. 



ON JEWISH LITERATURE. 



107 



a special administration, and the possessors of a 
special religion. They appear as the rejectors of the 
Messiah whom they had long anticipated, and their 
dispersion is regarded as a Providential punishment 
for that act of ingratitude. 

It is to the great fact of the rejection by the Jews 
of that Being whom we believe to have been the 
Messiah, that our attention is to be directed in the 
present discourse. It is not surprising that a philan- 
thropic individual who felt a deep sympathy with 
those attempts which have been made to convert the 
Hebrew nation to Christianity, and a sincere interest 
in their welfare, should have desired that the subject 
should be brought before this University, and should 
accordingly have presented a gift to it a few years 
ago 1 for an annual Sermon, as he himself expressed 
it, " on the application of the prophecies in the Holy 
Scriptures respecting the Messiah, to our Lord and 
Saviour Jesus Christ, with an especial view to the 
confuting the arguments of Jewish commentators, and 
the promoting the conversion to Christianity of the 
ancient people of God" 

The subject of the present discourse is, therefore, 
defined by the wishes of that benefactor. I should 
have been glad if we could have investigated the 
various causes which have operated most forcibly in 



1 In 1848. 



108 



ON JEWISH LITERATURE. 



SERM. IV, 



preventing the Jews from accepting the Christian 
faith. The brief space of our present service will, 
however, only permit of the review of a single one 
of them, the consideration of which will, I hope, 
nevertheless answer, in some humble manner, the 
noble purpose which our benefactor had at heart. 

The cause to which I allude, is the fact that the 
Jews possess a literature directed against Christianity, 
which is not only taught to the mass of their nation, 
but is of sufficient subtilty and importance to com- 
mand the respect, and in some sense satisfy the 
judgment, of their intellectual men. We are too apt 
to regard them as rejecting Christianity, simply 
because their fathers did so, and because they have 
never had the candour to reconsider the question. 
This, however, is not wholly the case. They pos- 
sessed, especially in the middle ages, distinguished 
writers, who established a regular school of propheti- 
cal interpretation in answer to the Christian theory 
of the fulfilment of those prophecies which relate to 
the Messiah. And as the wish of the founder of this 
Sermon contemplated a reply to those writers, which 
are referred to in argument with the modern Jews, 
I think that it will not be a misemployment of your 
time if I first give such a brief sketch of Jewish theo- 
logical literature as will enable you to understand 
the nature of their opposition to Christianity, more 
especially as I am not aware that any of those who 



SERM. IV. 



ON JEWISH LITERATURE. 



109 



have preached in past years on this subject have 
done so. 1 

Jewish literature has especially flourished at three 
different periods, and in three different lands ; — in 
Judsea in the period which intervened between the 
return from captivity and the commencement of the 
Christian era ; — in Galilee and Mesopotamia from the 
3rd to the 8th centuries a.d. ; — and in Spain from 
the 10th to the 15th. 

1. Few public events ever worked so mighty an 
effect on a nation in so short a period, as the captivity 
at Babylon wrought on the Jews. 2 It affected their 
social and intellectual life in modes which exist- to the 
present day. It imparted to them a new language and 
a new written character 3 ; it for ever banished from 

1 Two of the Sermons which had been preached in preceding 
years have been published ; one by Dr. Marsh, in 1849, entitled 
" Predicted History of the Messiah fulfilled in Jesus," and the 
other (in 1850), by the Rev. C. Girdleston, on "Messiah pierced," 
both of which Sermons investigate a single passage of prophecy 
without presenting an introduction to the literature of the subject. 
The sources from which the facts for the present Sermon have 
been drawn are mostly enumerated in the notes. A useful work 
on the history of Jewish literature has been recently published 
by the Syriac scholar, Dr. Etheridge, entitled "Jerusalem and 
Tiberias ; Sora and Cordova ; a Survey of the Religious and 
Scholastic Learning of the Jews." 

2 See Milman's " Hist, of the Jews," b. ix. 

3 The view here intended is, that the Jews exchanged the old 
Hebrew or Samaritan character for the square Chaldee, which is 
now called Hebrew ; the old character reappearing only in coins 
of the house of the Maccabees. The Hebrew langunge was 



110 



ON JEWISH LITERATURE. 



SRRM. IV. 



tliem the practice of polygamy ; it excited in them a 
lasting hatred of idolatry ; it enlightened them on the 
doctrines of a future life and of moral duty, and by 
binding them in a common suffering and a common 
sorrow, extinguished for a time those unhappy feuds 
which had so often proved their ruin. But it 
was the effect which related to their literature with 
which we are now concerned. Their social state was 
so altered by their captivity that they were compelled 
to form an uninspired theological literature. For 
they returned home, as we have already hinted, 
with a new language. They had not only laid aside 
the old Hebrew alphabetical character, but had 
adopted the forms of speech of the Eastern Aramaic, 
or, as it is commonly called, the Chaldee tongue. 
Hence their own law became unintelligible to them 1 , 
and the necessity for understanding it called forth a 
new order of interpreters, and a new literature of 
translations or paraphrases into the newly acquired 
tongue. These interpreters are known by the name 
of the Rabbins, and the translations by the name of 
Targums. 

also exchanged for Clialdee, or Eastern Aramaic ; and in Galilee 
and the northern parts of Palestine, the pronunciation in later 
times probably approximated more to the Western Aramaic or 
Syriac. The original sources for forming a judgment on this 
question are given in Home's " Introduction," vol. ii. ch. i. See 
also Stuart's " Hebrew Grammar " (Introduction), and Marsh's 
"Lectures," part ii. pp. 136 et seq. 
1 Compare Neh. viii. 8. 



SERM. IV. 



ON JEWISH LITERATURE. 



Ill 



There were circumstances, too, in their social 
condition at that time, which gave increased im- 
portance to these writings and their authors. After 
the captivity, the Levites ceased to be the great 
instruments for teaching the people, and a new order 
of teachers arose in those separate little centres of 
worship, which grew up under the name of syna- 
gogues. 1 It is not difficult to see how such an 
order would gradually gain power. Parallels are 
offered to us in other countries, as, for example, in 
the epoch when the Latin language ceased to be 
spoken, and was changed into the various tongues 
of modern Europe ; or in India, in the age when the 
Sanscrit ceased to be the vernacular tongue, and yet 
continued to be the depositary of the religious creed. 
In both epochs alike there continued to be a learned 
language in the hands of an educated order; and 
this order naturally acquired intellectual and after- 
wards spiritual influence; in the one case there 
arose the Roman Catholic priesthood, and in the other 
the Brahminical; in both they first became the 
translators, and afterwards the interpreters of the 
ancient religious books. 

It was this department of interpretation which 
gave to the Rabbins the opportunity of insinuating 
into the Jewish mind the body of traditional doctrine 



1 See Milman's " Hist, of the Jews," iii. book 18. 



112 



ON JEWISH LITERATURE. 



SERM. IV. 



distinct from the written word of God, which, formed 
the strength of Pharisaism, against which our Lord so 
often levelled His addresses. 1 It does not, however, 
appear that this new system of doctrine was at that 
early period committed to writing, or that the para- 
phrastic translations or Targums of the ancient Scrip- 
tures, of which we possess the copies, were composed 
till near the end of the first of those periods into 
which we divided Jewish theological literature. 2 
Nor would the notice of them have fallen properly 
within our province, if it were not on account of 
the importance which they assume in controversy, 
as recording the interpretations assigned at that 
time to certain passages in the Old Testament. 

Independently, however, of this consideration, the 
time will not be lost that has been spent in thus 
viewing the morning of Jewish uninspired literature. 
The productions of that age may be few, but in 
noticing the causes which thus created a literature, 
we have ascended to the fountain head of the waters 
which ultimately expand themselves into broad 
streams. And as the student who wishes to under- 
stand the history of Art busies himself with the study 
of the age when it was struggling to emancipate itself 
from the crudeness which cramped its early efforts 
towards a free development, so, if we would view 

1 E.g., in Mark vii. 

2 See Bartolocci, " Bibliotliec. Magn. Rabbin," vol. iii. 



SEEM. IV. 



OX JEWISH LITERATURE. 



113 



the full daylight of a nation's literature, we must 
watch its sun rising amid twilight, and battling with 
the mists which obscured its early brightness. 

2. An interval of two centuries separates the 
second age of the national literature from the first, 
— an interval during which the nation, after strug- 
gling for its independence, and after manifesting a 
heroic patriotism, even in the hour of its deepest 
gloom, had been finally removed from that city 
which, for more than twelve hundred years, had 
been the metropolis of the religion and the race. 
Yet in spite of their exile, the Jews were able to 
maintain their nationality, and to form centres of 
Jewish life in different spots in heathen lands. Two 
places were selected by them as their especial homes. 
The one was Galilee, which was under the Byzantine 
power; the other was Mesopotamia, under the Sas- 
sanian dynasty of Persia. In each a centre of 
government existed for the dispersed Jewish people, 
whence they received their creed, and to which they 
yielded spiritual obedience. In each resided a Patri- 
arch who regulated their whole system of education, 
and directed, by means of legates, the affairs of his 
nation in other lands, exercising a power which 
offers no unapt analogy in miniature to the combined 
spiritual and temporal powers afterwards exercised by 
the Popes of Rome, or by the Mahometan Caliphs. 

While these Patriarchs flourished, their abodes, 

i 



114 



ON JEWISH LITERATURE. 



SERM. IV. 



the one at Tiberias, the other in Babylonia, were 
the places around which were gathered schools of 
the most learned Jews, and to which the youth of 
their people, scattered in other lands, betook them- 
selves to receive their education. The literature 
taught was entirely theological; but a regular and 
well ordered school of it existed, which has pro- 
duced works which form the standard national 
literature, even at this day. The theological studies 
embraced the two subjects which we are accus- 
tomed to call Biblical Criticism and Biblical Inter- 
pretation. The books on the former subject related 
to the determination of the genuine text of the 
ancient scriptures, and are called the Masora ; the 
latter related to the meaning of the text, and are 
called the Talmud. It is to the school of Tibe- 
rias that we owe the system of Biblical criticism. 
It was the teachers gathered there about the year 
a.d. 400, who collated manuscripts, and determined 
and arranged the text, performing much the same 
kind of office which the Christian critic Origen had 
so honourably executed at Alexandria two centuries 
earlier ; and it was probably at that time that they 
attempted to fix the ancient pronunciation of the 
Hebrew by the invention of the vowel points 1 , with 
which that language is now usually written. 

1 The date of the introduction of the vowel points was a 
subject much debated among the great Hebrew scholars of the 



SERM. IV. 



ON JEWISH LITER ATUEE . 



115 



While the school of criticism was restricted to 
Tiberias, that of interpretation was even more culti- 
vated by the Jews of Babylonia. A systematic digest 
was there made of the traditional interpretations 
which had grown up through centuries. It was 
named the Talmud, and contained two parts, the 
Mishna, or text of the traditions, and the Gemara, or 
commentary on them. The difference will be under- 
stood by those who are familiar with the legislation 
of Justinian. 1 The Mishna was like his Code, embody- 
ing the national laws ; the Gemara, like his Pandects, 
embodying the mass of precedents. .This system of 
interpretation is received by most Jews with the 
same reverence which they attach to the Scriptures. 
It embodies, according to their belief, an oral tra- 
dition originally revealed from heaven, and handed 
down co-ordinately with the sacred volume. Nor 
ought it to escape our notice how closely herein their 
feeling resembles that with which the Eoman Catholic 
regards the teaching of the tradition which rests on 
the authority of the Church ; — a circumstance attri- 
butable in its origin, as we have already stated, to 
the fact of the religious teaching resting with a 

17th century. The references for investigating it are to be 
found in Home's "Introduction," vol. ii. chap. i. sect. i. ; and 
Marsh's "Lect." part ii. The opinion of Cappel here adopted 
is now generally received 

1 Gibbon's " Decline and Fall," ch. xliv. 

i 2 



116 



ON JEWISH LITERATURE. 



SERAI. IV. 



learned order at a time when the majority of the 
people were unable to investigate for themselves ; 
and a clear example how remarkably the various 
events of the middle ages, in which there seems at 
first sight no regularity, are really reducible to 
the same causes, and capable of being generalised 
into the same laws ; being but manifestations of the 
similar state of society which existed in different 
countries which were at the same stage of political 
growth. 

It is this reverent regard which the Jew bears to 
the Talmud that renders it of importance in con- 
troversy. It stands to him as the Bible does to 
the Protestant ; or as the Yedas to the Brahmin ; or 
as the decrees of the Church to the Roman Catholic. 
But there is also another value in it, viz. that in 
spite of the mass of allegorical and fanciful interpre- 
tation which it contains, it conveys the first example 
of the unreal, and, as we believe, forced interpreta- 
tions which the Jews began to find it necessary to 
impose on the old prophecies, in order to wrest them 
from the use to which the Christian writers applied 
them. 

3. We shall now proceed to sketch the third period, 
or, as it may be truly called, the golden age of 
Jewish literature, which existed in Spain from the 
10th to the 15th century. 

The state of the Hebrew nation in this period forms 



SERM. IV. 



OX JEWISH LITERATURE. 



117 



nearly the only bright spot in the sad picture of their 
history. 

It cannot be a subject for surprise, that when the 
Mahometan conquerors, at the beginning of the 8th 
century, crossed the straits which separate Africa 
from Europe to conquer the Spanish peninsula, they 
were hailed by the Jews — who had been bowed down 
under the oppression of the Visigoths — as friends 
and deliverers. Under the generous protection of 
this race of conquerors, the Jews lived in happiness 
and increased in material prosperity, maintaining a 
commerce between the eastern and western parts of 
that sea, which, on three of its shores, was enclosed 
by the vast Mahometan empire ; and it ought to be 
an instructive lesson to consider that it was under 
the shelter of the followers of the false Prophet that 
they found the protection which they sought in 
vain from the followers of Him, whose very last 
prayer had been for their race : " Father, forgive 
them, for they know not what they do." 

It was the safety and wealth that the nation 
possessed, which enabled its superior spirits to devote 
themselves to intellectual pursuits. That may truly 
be said to have been the noonday of Jewish litera- 
ture. Not only in theology, but in the art of poetry, 
and in science, there arose distinguished writers. 
At a time when the rest of Europe was enshrouded 
in darkness, broken only by the little lamp of know- 

i 3 



118 



ON JEWISH LITERATURE. 



SERM. IV. 



ledge which had been borrowed from the Moors, 
science and learning were beginning to shed their 
rays over the Mahometan kingdom of the peninsula. 
Algebra and the abstract sciences were eagerly pur- 
sued by them, and Jewish astronomers were employed 
in constructing the Alphonsine tables, the interest of 
which is well known. 1 Discoveries were made in 
anatomical science by Jews, and the chief physicians 
in Europe were taken from that nation ; whilst others 
of them, through their knowledge of banking and 
finance, rose to high ministerial functions and offices 
in the courts of the caliphs. Possessed of equal 
rights with their Mahometan fellow- subjects, it seemed 
as if they forgot that they were in a strange land ; 
their harp no longer hung silent upon the willows ; 
the spirit of their ancient psalmody revived ; and 
many of their lyrics remain, cramped indeed by the 
unnatural adoption of the Arabian metre, and by the 
use of rhyme, yet breathing in their matter and 
meaning that spirit of poetic inspiration which 
always commands the sympathies and awakens the 
response of the general heart. 2 

It was in the department of theology, however, 
that their literature was most distinguished. It was 

1 The tables of Alphonso X. in 1252. (De Castro's Hist. p. 62.) 

2 The Mediaeval Jewish Poetry will be found translated into 
German, in "Die Synogale Poesie des Mittelalters, von Dr. Zunz ; 
Berlin, 1855 " See also his work, " Zur Geschichte und Literatur ; 
Berlin, 1845." 



SERM. IV. 



ON JEWISH LITERATURE. 



119 



an accident, which about the middle of the 8th century 
brought a distinguished Jewish theologian from the 
East into Spain. 1 Welcomed by his countrymen, he 
immediately opened a school of Jewish literature in the 
then rising University of Cordova. The higher Jews, 
nevertheless, still continued to send their children 
to the schools of Egypt or Babylon to receive their 
education, until the schism in the caliphate and the 
persecutions commenced in the 11th century by the 
Egyptian (Fatimite) dynasty drove the Jewish pro- 
fessors to seek refuge under the enlightened sway of 
the Spanish caliphs. The effect of this immigration 
on the revival of Jewish learning was almost as 
marked as that which was seen in the analogous case 
of the revival of Greek literature in the 15th century, 
when the Greek population of Constantinople re- 
treated into Western Europe on the taking of their 
city by the Mahometans. 

Schools of Jewish theology not only sprung up 
immediately in Cordova and the other great cities, 
such as Seville and Granada, which formed the 
glory of the south of Spain, but their influence ex- 
tended across the chain of mountains which hems in 
the province of Andalusia, and made itself felt in 
the Universities of Toledo and Valencia, and even as 
far north as Barcelona. The great subjects of study 

1 Named Moses. See Milman's "Hist, of Jews," iii. 285. 

i 4 



120 



ON JEWISH LITERATURE. 



SERM. TV. 



in these schools were the principles of Biblical, and 
especially of prophetical interpretation. Though 
much tied down by the authority of the Talmud, the 
teachers still felt that its system of interpretation was 
often fanciful, its great fault being that it partook of 
the common property of Oriental thought, of assign- 
ing an allegorical meaning to that which is literal 
and fact. 1 Rejecting, therefore, an allegorical inter- 
pretation, they adopted a literal and grammatical 
one, and accordingly laid a basis for it in the careful 
study of the structure and genius of their own 
tongue. 

Thus far their principles may have been sincere, 
and suggested by an honest perception of the impro- 
prieties of the ordinary system of interpretation ; 
yet it must be added that the chief motive, which is 
at once apparent in many of their interpretations 
of particular passages, is the design of giving such 
a meaning to them as to destroy the force of the 
Christian interpretation of them. 

It may be well, for the sake of giving indivi- 
duality to these writers, to name the principal of 
them. 2 The early part of the 12th century produced 

1 This allegorical mode of interpretation became common after 
the time of Philo (a.d. 50). See Essay on Philo in Prof. Jowett's 
work on St Paul's Epistles. 

2 For information on these and other subjects, see J. B. De 
Rossi's " Dizionario Storico ^degli Autori Ebrei e delle loro 
opere ;" also "Hist, of Jews of Spain and Portugal, by E. H. 



SERM. IV. 



ON JEWISH LITERATURE. 



121 



three, viz. Jarchi, surnamed Kashi, Aben Ezra, and 
David Kimchi ; and the latter part of it produced 
one, viz. Maimonides. The first of these, Jarchi, 
was not, strictly speaking, a Spanish Jew. He lived 
in the north-east of France, and was the contem- 
porary and disciple of Abelard, and of other distin- 
guished men, who in that age adorned the University 
of Paris. His mind was cultivated by extensive 
travel, and his commentaries are creditable to the 
judgment of their writer. The second of them, Aben 
Ezra, taught a few years later at Cordova. Eminent 
in his own day for his general cultivation and for his 
acquaintance with foreign tongues, he is now known 
only as the author of a subtle commentary, which 
will bear comparison with those of a better age. 
The third, Kimchi, taught also in Spain, and is 
allowed by both Jews and Christians alike, to be a 
commentator remarkable for power of language, 
profoundness of knowledge, and clearness of method. 
The other name which we enumerated, is more 
generally known, viz. Maimonides. Educated at 
Cordova by Averroes, the celebrated commentator 
on Aristotle, he was thoroughly acquainted with 
Greek philosophy, as well as with Jewish theology. 
Accordingly he rose above the level of a mere com- 

Lindo, 1848 ;" also "Hist, of the Jews in Spain, by Don Adolfo 
de Castro, 1851;" also the works of Calmet, Basnage, Gaffarelli, 
Delitzsch, Julius Fiirst, and Jo. Chr. Wolf 



122 



ON JEWISH LITERATURE. serm. iv. 



mentator. Under the garb of a theologian he was 
really a philosopher. His purpose formed no unworthy 
parallel to that of the Christian Aquinas, who lived 
in Italy about half a century later. Just as that 
great thinker aimed at giving a universal philosophy, 
which, grasping in one magnificent generalisation 
the worlds of matter and of mind, might assign to 
the Christian and ecclesiastical doctrine its true 
position in such a scheme ; so Maimonides endea- 
voured to evolve a universal philosophy, from 
which the Kabbinical conceptions of the Talmud 
might be natural corollaries. Both were trammelled 
by a body of doctrine which they neither desired nor 
were able to reject. But Maimonides, less fortunate 
than Aquinas, was deemed to have trespassed on the 
received creed ; and not only were his opinions the 
means of producing theological feuds, but their 
author was compelled to quit Spain, and die an exile 
in a foreign land. 

After Maimonides the glory of the Jewish people 
began to decline. Their literature, became, indeed, 
known in foreign lands, and the system of Pantheistic 
philosophy called the Cabbala, was even re-produced 
with approval in Florence, in the brightest period of 
Italian literature. 1 But in Spain, the events which 
followed, tended to extinguish their literature. The 

1 ByPicodiMirandola. See Hallam's "Hist, of Lit./' i. 3. 202. 



serm. iv. ON JEWISH LITERATURE. 



123 



tide of Christian conquest, which had steadily set in 
from the North, overflowed, about the year a.d. 1240, 
the valley of the Guadalquiver, and Cordova and 
Seville were retaken by the Christian kings of Spain. 
And though the conqueror transferred the Jewish 
teachers to Toledo, and offered them his protection, 
succeeding sovereigns persecuted them, and one only 
name stands out in their theological literature as a 
writer against Christianity, viz. Abarbanel, whose 
name is well known in connection with the court of 
Ferdinand and Isabella, and the circumstances of the 
expulsion of the Jews from Spain. It is necessary, 
however, to add to this list one more name, that of an 
individual who flourished in Lithuania about the 
close of the 16 th century. It is the Rabbin Isaac, the 
author of the most complete defence of the Jewish 
creed, and the most subtle and controversial attack 
on our religion which has ever been written, and 
which, along with those previously noticed, is the 
standard authority with the modern Jews. 

The history which we have now completed will, I 
trust, not have proved uninteresting, as it assuredly 
is not irrelevant to the subject of our present sermon, 
which is the establishment of the Christian interpre- 
tation of prophecies relating to the Messiah, against 
the views of the Jewish commentators. 

We shall proceed accordingly to notice the proof 
of the Messiahship of our Lord Jesus Christ, drawn 



124 



ON JEWISH LITERATURE. serm. iv. 



from the prophecies of the Old Testament, with a 
special reference to the refutation of the Spanish 
school of Jewish interpretation. 

The controversy between the Jew and the Christian 
consists in this. Both admit the existence of a body 
of ancient prophecy predicting a Messiah, but they 
differ in their interpretation of it. The one asserts 
that the Messiah has not yet come, the other claims 
for Jesus of Nazareth the fulfilment of those antici- 
pations. How shall this controversy be decided ? 1 

One of the most simple methods would be this : 
Let us imagine ourselves to have been living at the 
period of the utterance of these prophecies, and 
endeavouring to collect from them the conceptions 
of this future personage which they would have been 
likely to supply. What idea should we have formed 
to ourselves of him ? We should have fixed the date 
of his appearing before the power of the Jewish race 
should depart ; for the sceptre was not to depart till 
Shiloh came. 2 We should have placed it more 
exactly, as Daniel tells us, within seventy weeks, i. e. 
four hundred and ninety years, from the edict of 
Artaxerxes for the rebuilding of Jerusalem. 3 We 

1 The following arguments are partly condensed from one of 
Dr. McCaul's " Warburton Lectures on the Prophecies" (1846), 
and partly suggested by a periodical formerly published by him, 
entitled, " The Old Paths, or a Comparison of the Principles and 
Doctrines of Modern Judaism with the Religion of Moses and the 
Prophets," 8vo, 1837. 

2 Gen. xlix. 10. 3 Dan. ix. 25. 



seem. iv. ON JEWISH LITERATURE. 125 



should have expected the continuance of the second 
temple until the appearance of the Messiah, for 
Haggai declared that the desired of all nations 
should come in it. 1 We should have anticipated 
some predecessor to come in the spirit of Elias to 
prognosticate his approach. 2 The prophecy of Micah 
would not have left us ignorant as to the place where 
we might expect his appearance, for it was to be in 
the despised Bethlehem Ephratah. 3 Extraordinary 
combinations of qualities were to expected in him. 
A virgin of the lineage of David was to conceive and 
bear him 4 ; and yet he was to be in some mysterious 
manner the Son of God, whose goings forth have 
been from of old, from everlasting. 5 He was to 
exercise the office of a prophet, and to imitate the 
ancient Moses 6 ; his prophetic mission was to com- 
mence in Galilee ; for it was said that there the 
people should see a great light. 7 The wonders of 
the old prophets were to be reproduced in him ; the 
eyes of the blind to be opened, and the ears of the 
deaf to be unstopped. 8 He was to be a priest too 
of a new kind. 9 The government also should be 
upon his shoulder, and his name should be called 



1 Hagg. ii. 7 6 Deut. xviii. 15. 

2 Mai. iii. 1 ; iv. 5 7 Isai. ix. 1. 

3 Micah v 2. 8 Isai. xxxv. 5 

4 Isai. vii. 14. 9 Psa. ex. 4. 

5 Micah v. 2. 



126 



ON JEWISH LITERATURE. serm. iv. 



Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Ever- 
lasting Father, the Prince of Peace. 1 Kings should 
fall down before him. 2 Of the increase of his govern- 
ment there was to be no end. 3 Yet along with 
this greatness how should we have reconciled the 
other qualities of which we read ? He was to be 
despised and rejected of men, a man of deep sorrow, 
despised by his own friends, acquainted with griefs 4 ; 
how should we have harmonised his universal reign 
with the lowly riding on an ass 5 , and with his being 
weighed against thirty pieces of silver ? 6 Lastly he 
was to be cut off, but not for himself. Cruelly 
mocked, he was to die with the wicked 7 , his 
garments were to be parted 8 , and yet he was to 
escape the fate of ordinary malefactors ; his bones 
were not to be broken, though his side was to be 
pierced, and he was to make his grave with the rich. 9 
But his soul was not to be left in the grave 10 ; and 
he was to receive gifts for men, and lead captivity 
captive 11 , and pour out his Spirit, and sons and 
daughters were to prophesy. 12 

Such is the conception that might have been 
formed of the future Messiah, when the roll of the 

1 Isai ix. 6. 7 Isai. liii. 9. 

2 Psa. lxxii. 11. § Psa. xxii. 18. 

3 Isai. ix 7. 9 Isai. liii. ix. 

4 Isai. liii. 3. 10 Psa. xvi. 18. 

5 Zech. ix. 9. 11 Psa. lxviii. 18. 

6 Zech. xi. 12, 13. 12 Joelii. 28. 



SERM. IV. 



ON" JEWISH LITERATURE. 



127 



Old Testament prophecy was closed, and the voice of 
Providence sealed up the words of the prophecy of 
that book. And can a candid mind doubt whether 
the being has yet appeared who answers to this antici- 
pation? Who is it that is yonder in the town of Beth- 
lehem, — the young infant on the knee of his virgin 
mother ? Who is it that is near the Jordan, saluted 
as the lamb of God by the hermit prophet, at whose 
wondrous teaching the Jews have repented as of 
old at that of Elias on Mount Carmel ? Who is it 
that toils day by day among the highlands of Galilee, 
never rejecting the prayer of the needy, dispensing 
his mercy ? Who is it that kneels yonder, lonely in 
the garden, bathed with the dews of night, bleeding 
with the agony of a soul exceeding sorrowful, mutter- 
ing, as if in the consciousness that he was not cut off 
for his own sin, " Father, if it be possible, let this cup 
pass from me"? What has caused nature to respond 
by a miraculous darkness as one of yon malefactors 
has exclaimed, " It is finished," and has given up the 
ghost ? Or, where can his buried body be gone ? 
" for some one has taken him away," exclaims his 
weeping follower, Magdalen, " and we know not 
where they have laid him." Tell me, I ask you, if 
it is not the individual, God and man, Saviour and 
sufferer, Prophet and sacrifice, of whom the prophets 
wrote and spoke ? Tell me which is history and which 
prophecy, the statements made hundreds of years 



128 



ON JEWISH LITERATURE. 



SERM. IV. 



before his appearance, or the simple unadorned 
narrative of his loving disciples ? 

So close a coincidence betwixt prophecy and 
history carries a moral force which is well-nigh 
irresistible. Whatever difficulties may attend the 
interpretation of prophecy, whatever discredit the 
rash haste of undisciplined minds may in this day 
have cast upon it, whatever suspicion the modern 
investigations on the nature of evidence may have 
thrown upon analogical reasoning 1 , such an accumu- 
lative proof as this, is powerful enough to outweigh 
them. If the number of the coincidences were small, 
or their application merely general, we might doubt 
whether the interpretation of the prophecies was not 
fanciful ; but their multitude, their minuteness, and 
their variety, forbid the possibility. The value of 
collective analogies like those with which we deal in 
assigning the meaning of prophecies, depends upon 
the principle which is commonly called "'circumstan- 
tial evidence." As they increase in number, in intri- 
cacy, in variety, the improbability of a chance coinci- 
dence becomes immensely heightened. The hemp 
threads which compose a coil of rope are separately 
weak, yet when united and intertwined, they form 
the tenacious cable which has strength enough 4o 
resist the force of pressure, or to allow the ships to 

1 See Mill's "Logic," vol. ii. ch 20. 



SERM. IV. 



ON JEWISH LITERATURE. 



129 



ride at their anchorage in safety as they rise and fall 
before the heavy swell of the rolling tide. 1 

But it will naturally occur to any of us to whom 
the proof of the Messiahship of Jesus appears so 
clear, to demand the grounds on which the Jewish 
writers reject it. Their reasons are principally 
three, which we now proceed to consider 2 , viz : — 

(1.) The historical one, that the Sanhedrim and 
Jewish authorities, in our Lord's lifetime, who had 
every means of examining the claims of Jesus, and 
who were actually predisposed to accept a Messiah 
about that time, rejected His claims. 

(2.) The philosophical one, that an incarnation 
of a Divine Being is an impossibility in the nature 
of things, as well as contrary to the analogy of the 
Mosaic dispensation. 

(3.) The- critical one, that the prophecies which 
relate to the Messiah are in great part either mis- 

1 Circumstantial evidence is logically invalid, in consequence of 
the technical fault of the middle term being undistributed in 
each of the syllogisms which compose it. Each syllogism is the 
avLorvfjov a^fxtiov of Aristotle's " Rhet." (i. ch. 2), and falls into 
the second figure. But though each argument is separately weak, 
the convergence of a large number, in proof of the same conclusion, 
possesses by the doctrine of chances a high logical probability, and 
in its moral effect is irresistible. It is this which constitutes 
much of the strength of Butler's " Analogy." The single analo- 
gies are weak, but the number and convergence of them towards 
the same point have the force of strong circumstantial evidence. 

2 These three reasons are well discussed in McCaul's " War- 
burton Lectures," to which reference has already been made. 

K 



130 



ON JEWISH LITERATURE. sebm. iv. 



translated or misinterpreted. The first of these is 
the popular objection; the second, that of Maimo- 
nides; the third, that of the other members of the 
school of Spanish commentators. 

1. In reply to the first of these arguments, it is 
sufficient to urge that we are not in doubt as to 
the character of the Sanhedrim in the time of our 
Saviour. Josephus remains as an unprejudiced 
witness of the profligacy, the corruption, the worldly 
and sceptical spirit of that body. It is natural 
that the Sadducean or sceptical party in that as- 
sembly should have rejected our Lord's pretensions; 
while, with regard to the Pharisaic section, any one 
who will refer to the Talmud, which embodies the 
traditional theology of Pharisaism, will feel con- 
vinced that those whose minds were enslaved by 
such puerilities, and whose faith in a Messiah, firm 
though it may have been, was in the appearance of 
an earthly sovereign, were not capable of being 
correct judges of the claims of One who preached 
a doctrine which was opposed to theirs, and whose 
life ran counter to their preconceptions. This 
reply, it will be observed, is founded on Jewish 
authorities; but if the Christian evangelists be 
further appealed to as cotemporary, though (let us 
for the moment admit) one-sided, witnesses, a con- 
firmation of this view is attained; for from them 



SERM. IV. 



ON JEWISH LITERATURE. 



131 



we learn that no proper or candid investigations 
of our Lord's claims were ever made. 

2. In passing to the second objection, which is 
urged on the part of the Jews, we no longer en- 
counter one that is merely superficial, but one which 
comes with higher pretensions, and is supported 
by a great name. It is Maimonides who urges the 
impossibility of the incarnation of deity and the 
contrariety of such an idea to the Mosaic economy. 

We have before shown that the philosophy of 
Maimonides was partly founded on that of Aristotle ; 
but to this ingredient was also added a considerable 
admixture of the Oriental philosophy of Zoroaster. 
It was this system which, learned by the Jews dur- 
ing the captivity, and wrought into a system called 
the Cabbala, and embodied in a work of the early 
ages, called the Zohar, infected more or less their 
men of superior minds to the latest period of the 
middle ages. Without inquiring what it was in 
itself, it would have amounted, as realised by Maimo- 
nides, to a system of pantheism, if it had not been 
modified by his Jewish education. If you can 
combine the Jewish idea of one personal God with 
the pantheistic notion of the impossibility of His 
attributes being separated from the universe, you 
will understand Maimonides's idea of the Divine 
Being. It will not be hard for those who compre- 
hend the subject to perceive how such a person 

K 2 



132 



ON JEWISH LITERATURE. 



SEKM. IV. 



would feel an aversion to the idea of the incarnation 
and suffering of divinity. And we may be excused 
from pausing to refute a view which receives its 
answer by the refutation of the theory from which it 
is a corollary. 

The other part of his objection — viz., that the idea 
of an incarnate Messiah was contrary to God's 
revelation to the Jews — was founded on his view 
of the purpose of the law of Moses. He has left 
us a work on this subject 1 , wherein he endeavours 
to show that the central thought of the ancient 
dispensation was to lead the Jews to the knowledge 
of God and the abandonment of idolatry. Hence 
he plausibly considers that the idea of Jesus being 
the Messiah would be a glaring instance of the very 
infringement of the command which forbad the 
making any similitude of the Almighty, for the 
violation of which the Jews had so often suffered and 
the obedience to which it had been the great purpose 
of the Jewish economy to establish. 

The answer to this objection is to be found, first, 
in the historical statements of the repeated appear- 
ances of the Divine Being under human form in both 
the Patriarchal and Jewish times; and, secondly, 
in denying that the worship of God and man in 
one Christ is obnoxious to the charge of producing 

1 " The Reasons of the Laws of Moses, from the More JVevo- 
chim" translated by Dr. Townley. 



SERM. IV. 



ON JEWISH LITERATURE. 



133 



that moral evil on the mind which the old forbidden 
idolatry confessedly effected. 

3. Leaving these objections urged by the Jews 
against Christianity, we pass to the third — the as- 
sertion that the prophecies supposed to apply to 
the Messiah are either mistranslated or misinter- 
preted. With regard to the former charge it is 
not necessary to make any observations, because the 
defence of it is now given up by their own writers, 
and because the ancient versions of which we spoke, 
called the Targums, frequently support the Chris- 
tian translation of the disputed texts. Nor shall 
I say anything in reference to the subject of types, 
though it truly belongs to this point; for type is 
but a prediction by action, as prophecy is by words; 
and the Jews are unable to find any solution so 
plausible to account for the sacrifices of their own 
law as that which is offered by the writer of the 
Epistle to the Hebrews. If Jewish sacrifice was 
(as they believe) from heaven, it is an enigma in- 
soluble except by Christianity. We restrict our- 
selves accordingly to the charge urged by the Jews 
of misinterpretation of prophecy. 

The prophetic texts which are made the grounds 
of dispute .are treated by the Hebrew school of 
commentators in two different modes. The one 
class of passages is explained by giving them a local 
and literal sense, as, for example, applying the 

K 3 



134 



ON JEWISH LITERATURE. 



SEEM. IV. 



passage of Isaiah, " Unto us a child is born, and 
he shall be called wonderful," 1 to Hezekiah; the other 
class is where apparently contradictory attributes 
are applied to the Messiah, as when he is described 
as "sitting on the throne of David to order it 
and to establish it for ever; " 2 and in another place 
as "wounded for sin and bruised for transgression, 
and making his grave with the wicked." 3 This 
class is explained by supposing that there were to 
be two Messiahs — one to suffer, the son of Joseph ; 
the other to reign, the son of David. 

The majority of the passages in dispute are 
contained, as would be supposed, in the Psalms, in 
Isaiah, and in Zechariah ; these being, for this reason, 
called emphatically the three evangelical books of 
the Old Testament. 

We may adduce as an example of the passages 
which are explained to refer to some other person 
than the Messiah, the magnificent text where 
Zechariah breaks out into the strain 4 , "Awake, 
sword, against my shepherd, and against the man 
that is my fellow, saith the Lord of hosts : smite the 
shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered : and I will 
turn mine hand upon the little ones." The commen- 
tator, Kimchi 5 , and others to whom we have alluded, 



1 Isai, ix. 6. 3 Isai. liii.,5-9. 

2 Isai. ix. 7. 4 Zech. xiii. 7. 

5 The Commentary of Kimchi on Zechariah has been trans- 



SERM. 1V 4 



GIST JEWISH LITERATURE. 



135 



assign this text to various lieathen kings, and un- 
derstand them to be described in it ironically as 
Jehovah's fellows. What is the line which might be 
adopted in reply to this view ? It is, first, that the 
Targums and the Talmud both apply it to the Mes- 
siah, thereby proving that such was the view of its 
meaning adopted by the ancient Jewish Church ; and, 
secondly, that the new interpretation, if even it will fit 
the passage under consideration, would not suit the 
context, because the same person who is here called 
"Jehovah's fellow" and "the shepherd of the peo- 
ple," is predicted to be sold for thirty pieces of silver, 
to be abhorred by the rich, to be loved by the poor, 
and to be cut off before the scattering of the Jews. 
Here are several circumstances which must be com- 
bined in any theory of the meaning of this passage. 
For the laws of critical interpretation must be 
amenable to the tests which regulate hypotheses in 
the sciences ; and if we are accustomed to hold it to 
be the highest confirmation of a scientific theory 
that it is adequate to explain the various phenomena 
to which it is applied 1 , is it too much to require that 

lated, with a useful Commentary, by Dr. McCaul ; to which, 
with the other works on the Jews by the same writer, such as the 
intellectual state of Rabbinical Jews, in chap. i. of " Sketches 
of Judaism and the Jews," the author of this Sermon is under 
large obligations. 

1 The two tests of scientific hypothesis usually given are, that 
the supposed cause be vera, and that it be adcequata. See the in- 
terpretation offered of them in Mill's "Logic," vol. ii. B. iii. ch. 14. 

k 4 



136 



ON" JEWISH LITERATURE. 



SERM. IV. 



such a test shall be regarded as equally decisive in 
the science of Scripture hermeneutics ? 

The other class of texts to which we alluded as 
describing at once the glory and the humiliation of 
the Messiah is too well known and too numerous to 
require quotation. The pathetic description 1 of the 
person "smitten and stricken," whose "soul was 
made an offering for sin," "upon whom was our 
peace, and upon whom God laid the iniquity of us 
all," is a sufficient example, especially as the whole 
body of Jewish mediaeval commentators admit (as 
their fathers did) that it applies to the Messiah. 
But they explain it to apply to a different Messiah 
from those texts which describe a Messiah who is to 
reign. In reply to this view, it is sufficient to state 
that we can prove historically that it was un- 
known until it was invented, in the process of con- 
troversy, for the purpose of refuting Christianity ; 
and that not only is there no example of a promise 
of two Messiahs, but such a view is contrary to 
passages in the prophets, where the same person is 
spoken of in the same verse under the two capaci- 
ties of monarch and sufferer, triumphant and abased. 

We have now sketched the Jewish objections and 
the mode of their refutation ; and we might, if time 
would allow, accumulate direct arguments in favour 

1 Isaiah, liii. 



SERM. IV. 



OX JEWISH LITERATURE. 



137 



of the Christian view of the advent of the Messiah in 
the person of Christ. But it may be permitted us to 
remark that, in any attempt to draw inferences from 
the prophecies of the Bible, we encounter a difficulty, 
arising from the want of any fixed principles of 
interpretation. In the explanation of the other 
mystical parts of the Bible, such as the type, the 
allegory, or the parable, theological science has to a 
great extent ascertained fixed methods of interpreta- 
tion ; but in the explanation of the prophecies there 
is no such rule. We have hinted already what must 
be the plan for discovering such rules. It must be 
by a careful study (1) of the nature and value of 
analogical evidence ; (2) of the nature and meaning of 
Hebrew symbolical language ; and (3) by the analysis 
of some few instances in which prophecies have 
been undoubtedly fulfilled, in order that rules derived 
from the two former methods may be tested and 
verified by the latter. Such a system of prophetical 
interpretation is yet to be created. Yet it will not, 
I hope, be improper in this place if I adduce the 
name of one individual — an ornament of our Univer- 
sity and Church, who, had he lived longer, might 
perhaps have given such a system, and who has left a 
work, cautious, logical, original, and philosophical, 
which is earnestly to be recommended to every theolo- 
gical student. I allude to Mr. Davison's " Lectures 
on the Structure, Use, and Interpretation of Pro- 



138 



OK JEWISH LITERATURE. seem. iv. 



ixhecy." It is one of those few works which can be 
pointed to as assisting in raising theology to the 
dignity of a fixed science. 

In conclusion, I wish to draw two brief inferences ; 
the first of which concerns our duty to the Jews, 
the second our duty to ourselves. 

1. We have sketched only one great feature of 
modern Jewish life, but it is one which will commend 
itself above all others to the sympathies of this 
present congregation. We have, nevertheless, seen 
enough to serve as an argument to our consciences 
in claiming for the Jewish nation our interest and 
our respect. Whatever may be the other hindrances 
to such a conversion of them as shall admit them to 
share the blessings of Christianity, the obstacle, at 
least, which arises from intellectual prejudice may 
be, we may hope, subdued by argument, or dissi- 
pated by kindness. It was with a purpose of this 
kind that a few years ago a Bishopric was founded 
at Jerusalem, and that missionary efforts have been 
carried on among the Jews abroad, and a missionary 
colony of converted Jews established at home. Yet 
it is not in great efforts like these, but in smaller 
acts of kindliness, whensoever they come in contact 
with our civilisation, that we may attempt to prove 
our religion by our acts. In England, at least, we 
have done a great deal in this direction, by admitting 
them to social and municipal rights. For, verily, we 



SERM. IV. 



ON JEWISH LITERATURE. 



139 



are great debtors to them for the shameful persecu- 
tions which Christians have exercised towards them 
in the middle ages. History records no massacre 
more ruthless than that slaughter of the Jews which 
was committed on the Rhine by the hordes of savages 
who went forth under the banner of the Cross to 
fight in the first crusade ; and there is no one 
here who has not read the sad story of the expul- 
sion of the Hebrew people from the Spanish penin- 
sula. 1 That is a thrilling narrative in history, the 
scene of which is laid on the banks of the Loire, which 
presents to our imagination the picture of a whole 
people, with their wives and little ones, crossing the 
broad stream to escape the tyranny which they 
dreaded 2 : but there is something still more sad, and 
that touches the human sympathies with a keener 
sense of shame, in the sight of yon people landed on 
the sea shore of Morocco, homeless, tentless, starving, 
driven forth from the towns which had been their 
homes, to wander over the earth, until death should 
release them from their woe. There is something in 
the emigration of the heroic people of La Vendee 
which we can look upon with admiration, for they 
are ' themselves the authors of the stern resolve to 
forsake for ever the fastnesses where they can be no 

1 The narratives may be found in Milman's " Hist, of Jews." 

2 The migration of the people of La Vendee. See Alison's 
" Europe" (first series), ch. xii. 



140 



ON JEWISH LITERATURE. 



5ERM. IV. 



longer free ; and they march, cheered with the hope 
of obtaining the protection of that flag, which, float 
where it may, marks out the home of the free and 
the refuge for the oppressed. But, oh ! there is not 
one ray of light or of hope to illuminate the dark 
scene of the expulsion of the Jews from the garden- 
like valleys of the Peninsula, which had been asso- 
ciated with the golden age of their modern history, 
when they were driven forth against their will, with 
their honest industry snatched from them, expelled 
for no offence, the victims of priestly bigotry, wan- 
derers without a friend or a shelter. Think you not, 
that, as the thousands of them yielded up their lives 
in that sad emigration, under the force of hunger, of 
heat, or of toil — there ascended with their parting 
breath into the ear of a God of mercy, a cry of 
vengeance against the land and the people that had 
sent them forth? Think you not that every effort 
of those who profess the faith of those persecutors 
to wipe out and atone by kindness for the cruelty of 
those who called themselves by the name of Christ, 
must be well-pleasing to that Being, who spent His 
life in sympathy, whose last prayer was for His 
enemies, and who, though enthroned within the 
Shechinah of eternal glory, is still, in all the strength 
of human sympathies, touched with the feeling of 
human infirmity? 

We cannot penetrate the darkness which overhangs 



serm. iv. ON JEWISH LITERATURE. 141 



the coming history of God's ancient people ; we can- 
not venture to predict that our efforts to impart to 
them our civilisation and our religion shall be suc- 
cessful ; we can, however, rest certain that it is our 
duty to endeavour to make them participate in these 
blessings. Yet the eye of hope, if it reads truly the 
unfulfilled prophecies which affect their race, cannot 
but think that the Jews are still reserved for a glo- 
rious destiny. It would seem that by some mighty 
impulse, and at some mysterious signal, their scat- 
tered tribes shall arise from the mountains, and 
valleys, and islands of the earth, and hasten to re- 
cognise the long-expected Christ. Yes ! their Mes- 
siah shall one day come to them, but not in the 
clouds of heaven. With the still small voice of con- 
science and of His spirit, He shall manifest himself 
to their souls. Each of them shall see, as it were, 
the vision which Isaiah saw, u the Lord high and 
lifted up," the radiant form of Jesus throned in the 
fire and cloud, attended by the song of the seraphim, 
revealed to the eye of the soul ; and, looking by faith 
on Him whom they have pierced, they shall recognise 
in him their long-expected Christ. And as their 
hearts sink within them at the thought, and as each 
exclaims, " Woe is me, for I am undone ; for I am a 
man of unclean lips," the seraph shall be sent forth 
with a live coal to declare that their iniquity is 
pardoned, and that their sin is covered. 



142 



ON JEWISH LITERATURE. 



SERM. IV. 



2. Finally, our subject is not without a lesson to 
ourselves. For though our earthly mission may not 
be towards the Jews, each of us has a duty to per- 
form in the world, and the vision of Isaiah opens up 
to us the spirit in which alone we can seek to perform 
it rightly. 

There is no spot on earth where a larger number 
of men of noble hopes or of high principle are ga- 
thered than in this University. And they who 
make it their business to gain the confidence of those 
whom they are privileged to instruct, well know that 
in the hearts of many students there dwells a deep 
and earnest wish to make their life here the means 
of preparation for a life of usefulness hereafter. 
Before many years are past, each one of us must go 
forth into the world to influence it or to be in- 
fluenced by it. It will then lie in the power of 
each one to do something, however little, for God 
and for goodness. Amid the squalid thousands of 
our crowded towns, or in the retirement of the rural 
chapelry ; amid the infection of hospitals, or bending 
over the bed of poverty ; amid the scenes of ordinary 
life, and in acts of common philanthropy, we may 
seek to work the work of Christ. But if we would 
be the means of doing so, we must not take our 
religious tone from the world, but must introduce 
into society some ingredient of goodness which it 
does not possess. That ingredient comes down from 



serm. iv. ON JEWISH LITERATURE. 143 

heaven. It is the power of God's Spirit which alone 
can give it us. It is He alone who can kindle in our 
souls the flame of love which shall burn with inex- 
tinguishable glory for His honour and man's welfare. 
And the way to obtain that Divine help is the same 
as in the case of Isaiah of old. We must contrast 
our unworthiness with the Divine purity, and learn 
to drop the tear of penitence, and pour out day by 
day, from our inmost hearts, the cry : " Woe is me, 
for I am undone ; for I am a man of unclean lips, 
and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips." 
And as soon as we shall have done this, the seraphim 
will be commissioned to take the live coal from the 
altar of incense, and to touch our lips. It is from the 
altar that the seraph brings the coal. It is not for 
our sake merely that God is merciful, but because 
there is an altar of incense in His presence ; and our 
prayers, mixed with that incense of our Saviour's 
intercession, rise up as a memorial before God. 
Unless we catch Isaiah's spirit we cannot be pre- 
pared for the prophetic work. It is only when 
the seraph has touched our lips, and our sins are 
cleansed, that we can hope to receive the preparation 
which shall fit us for our ministrations of love. 

And in our life of labour let us ever keep before 
us the sense of our unworthiness and of God's mercy 
to us; and then, when life draws to a close, if we 
stand trembling at the thought of labours apparently 



144 



ON JEWISH LITERATURE. seem. iv. 



useless, and lament in the words, " Woe is me, for I 
am an unclean man," the angel shall be again 
commissioned with the symbol of mercy to cleanse 
our sins ; and our purified souls shall be admitted 
to see the Lord high and lifted up, eye to eye, spirit 
to spirit, and to join in the seraph song of "Holy, 
Holy, Holy!" 



SERMON V. 

THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY TRINITY. 

(PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY, JUNE 20TH, 1858.) 

Ephesians ii. 18. 

For through Him we both have access by one Spirit 
unto the Father. 

The doctrine of the Holy Trinity, which the Apostle 
implies in these words, is the centre of a group of 
Christian doctrines which may fairly be said not to 
have been explicitly known antecedently to the 
teaching of Our Saviour and his Apostles. More 
than even other doctrines, this had hardly been 
guessed at by heathen speculation, hardly un- 
derstood by Jewish inspiration. It stands in ma- 
jestic isolation from other truths, a vision of God 
incomprehensible, the mystery of mysteries. We 
can find analogies and explanations of other doc- 
trines in the world of nature, physical or moral, but 

L 



146 



THE TRINITY. 



SERM. V. 



of this we can discover none. 1 The existence of sin, 
the need of superhuman aid, the salvation by media- 
tion, the dignity of sacrifice — all these truths, though 
heightened and explained by revelation, yet are 
written in the scheme of nature, and intertwined 
with the tissue of the visible creation. But when 
we transcend these, and pass from the work to the 
agent, from the government of God to the mysterious 
nature of God Himself, we are lost in mystery ; spe- 
culation is well-nigh hushed before the overpowering 
glory of the Eternal. We pass from the earth to the 
heaven, we enter the shrine of the Divine presence. 
We contemplate in spirit the mystery hidden of old, 
the mystery of the trinal existence of Him who is 
the source of all power, the first cause of all creation ; 
Him who, in the depths of a past eternity, existed in 
the mysterious solitude of his Divine essence, when 
there was still universal silence of created life around 
His throne, and who will exist ever in the future 
of eternity, from everlasting to everlasting, God. 

Speculation is, on such a subject, vain ; yet a 
reverent attention to that which has been made 
known to us is our fitting duty. And nothing will 

1 It is needless perhaps to remark that attempts have been 
made to discover trinal analogies in nature, such as the threefold 
dimension of geometric figure, &c. Such attempts were made in 
the Neo-Platonic School of Alexandria, and in England in the 
last century. Most persons very properly reject them as mys- 
tical and unreal. 



SERM. V. 



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147 



more completely prepare us for considering the sub- 
ject in a proper temper than the reflection that this 
great doctrine is not revealed to us in the Scripture 
to gratify our curiosity, but as a practical truth 
deeply and nearly related to our eternal interests, 
not in its speculative but in its practical aspects. 
For you should carefully note that the doctrine 
admits of these two distinct points of view. It 
may be looked at speculatively, as unfolding the 
nature of God ; and then it becomes the battle- 
ground of weary controversy, and men doubt it, or 
misunderstand it, or acid to it in the hard logical 
formulas which are necessary to give precision to 
human ideas ; or it may be looked at practically, 
as showing us three distinct relations which God is 
pleased to sustain toward man, and three corres- 
ponding classes of duties which man is under obli- 
gation to perform towards God. This latter, or the 
practical aspect, is the view under which the subject 
is presented to us in the New Testament ; the former, 
or the theoretical aspect, is that under which it has 
generally been regarded in the history of the Church. 
The Bible contains the practical doctrine, the Atha- 
nasian Creed the speculative. It is easy to perceive 
that the practical view is immensely the more useful ; 
and happy should we be if we could lay aside con- 
troversy, and simply believe. But we can never 
hope to do so ; and, therefore, it becomes important 

L 2 



148 



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to form to ourselves definite views on the speculative 
controversy. For. we cannot, in this age, receive the 
kingdom of God literally as little children. We can- 
not, if we would, ignore the controversies which 
have gathered round Christian doctrines in the course 
of eighteen centuries ; we cannot think of those doc- 
trines apart from the ideas which have crystallised 
together with them. We cannot think on all sub- 
jects of life and science with the healthy, critical, 
inductive spirit of the nineteenth century, for six 
days of the week, and lay aside our habits of thought 
in the church on Sundays, to receive truths with the 
simplicity of Jewish believers, or the reverence of me- 
diaeval mystics. We gaze on the rays of truth which 
come forth from the eternal source of glory in Christ 
and from the Pentecostal fire ; but those rays come 
to us piercing through the distance of eighteen cen- 
turies, tinged in their passage through the mists of 
human thought ; and we cannot hope to view them 
in their purity, without using rational means to 
deprive them of their tinge of colour, and to destroy 
the width of their refractions. 

And, therefore, I should hope that we shall not 
misemploy our time on the present occasion, if we 
restrict our attention to the speculative side of this 
great doctrine. It is possible to make it clear, 
perhaps also to make it interesting. And we shall 
be likely to secure both results if we sketch briefly 



SERM. V. 



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149 



the progress of thought in reference to this doctrine 
through the Christian history, noting one or two 
great epochs, when Christendom has been agitated 
by the controversies respecting it ; controversies 
which have left their impress on succeeding ages, 
and live still in the hearts, if not in the creeds, of 
men and churches. 

We must assume (for in the few minutes of the 
present discourse we cannot pause to prove it) that 
our Blessed Lord taught, and that the Apostles 
intended to convey the doctrine, that the Divine 
nature consists of three distinct classes of attri- 
butes, or (to use our human expression) three 
personalities 1 ; and that each of these three distinct 
Persons contributes separate offices in the work of 
human salvation ; God the Father pardoning ; God 
the Son redeeming ; God the Holy Ghost hallowing 
and purifying sinful men. 

This doctrine can, I believe, be proved distinctly 

1 Personality, as is well known, is the translation of the term 
vTzoaraaic. It is hardly necessary to remark that the writer of 
this Sermon does not intend — by the use of cautious modes of 
statement, such as the one which is here given in the text, and 
similar ones which occur afterwards — to favour the Sabellian 
theory of the Trinity, which made the distinction of the three 
persons to be subjective instead of objective ; distinctions in the 
mode of God's revealing himself to man, instead of real dis- 
tinctions in the Divine nature. Such a theory is precisely an 
instance of those very attempts to venture beyond the teaching 
of Scripture, against which this Sermon is designed as a protest. 

i. 3 



150 



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from the New Testament ; and history can be added 
as an attestation to show that it was the primitive 
teaching of the Church. 1 Nor does it seem that for 
two centuries and a half any doubts were felt on the 
question. Christian doctrines were, indeed, during 
those two centuries, brought into contact with 
heathenism, and many of them underwent free 
criticism ; but controversy did not invade the doc- 
trine of the mysterious existence of the Holy Trinity. 
It was in Egypt that the controversy awoke, in 
the city of Alexandria — that city, planted by the 
Greeks, which was at once a mart of commerce 
and a seat of learning ; the meeting-point of East 
and West, alike in manners, in religion, in philo- 
sophy. It may seem unfit to bring before you his- 
torical allusions which might be judged ill-suited to 
the pulpit, but the truth is that no one can, without 
knowledge on this subject, understand the Athanasian 
Creed, which we occasionally repeat, and which, 
when we do understand it, you will perhaps agree 
with me, there is no cause to wish to have removed 
from our service books ; and also there is another 
reason which it were affectation to ignore, which 
may justify me in touching on this subject. Any 
one who knows our popular literature, will be aware 

1 Perhaps the most complete statement of the evidence in 
favour of the doctrine of a Trinity, is to be found in Vogan's 
"Bampton Lectures." 



SEKM. V. 



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151 



that within recent years, the thoughts of those old 
Alexandrian thinkers, who fought against our holy 
religion, and who forced upon Athanasius and the 
noble band of Christian defenders, the very weapon 
of logical terms by which they sought to overthrow 
it, have been made familiar in some of the most 
talented works of fiction which our age has known. 
One of the most brilliant minds which England's 
church can boast at this moment 1 , has consecrated 
his great powers of imagination to portray the cha- 
racter and reproduce the thoughts of that martyred 
woman, in whose death the heathen system of phi- 
losophy in Egypt was extinguished ; and, therefore, 
in alluding to such subjects I may fairly presume 
that you are not strangers to them ; in fact, I am 
only carrying out a practice to which our sermons 
ought really to conform, of conveying religious 
information addressed to the thoughts of common 
life, just as lessons on religious duties ought to be 
adapted to the difficulties of ordinary employments. 

It was from about the 3rd to the 6th century of 
the Christian era, in a time when the storm of war 
or civil commotion had almost destroyed the other 
great seats of education, that the Greek University 
at Alexandria offered a retirement for the thoughtful 
and the speculative. It was then that there arose 

1 Rev. C. Kingsley, jun. See especially his "Hypatia;" and 
also his " Lectures on the Philosophers of Alexandria." 

l 4 



152 



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a school of philosophers (vulgarly called Neo- 
Platonists) who combined Eastern and Western 
modes of thought. Inheriting from the Greek 
thinker, Plato, that power to mount into the world 
of abstractions, that power of transcendent genius 
which led him to outstrip his age, and almost to 
think, as it were, in modern ideas 1 ; they also in- 
herited the Pantheistic spirit, which had outlived 
the decay of the old Hieratic system of Egypt, and 
the mystic, allegorising tendency, which, springing 
up in the East, and raised into a system by Philo 2 , 
was the means of distorting plain truths of fact or of 
doctrine into mystical meanings which their authors 
intended not. This school of thinkers denied the 

1 This modern aspect of Plato is usually thought to exist, not 
merely in the political problems which occur in his treatises of 
the "Republic" and ^Laws," but mainly in his contrast between 
the fixity of the vov/jevov or 'idea, known by the reason, and the 
fleeting character of the (paivofxevov, known by the senses ; which, 
translated into the language of modern philosophy, is the contrast 
between the immutability of nature's laws and the mutability 
of nature's phenomena. This modern aspect is, however, more 
apparent than real. In truth, all Greek philosophy, anterior to 
the Stoics, is ancient ; and the forms under which it was presented 
by its authors are more or less obsolete. It was in them that the 
modern element was first developed. It is gratifying to be able 
to refer to one work in which the historic development of philoso- 
phical thought is really kept in view, viz. Sir Alexander Grant's 
edition of Aristotle's " Ethics," (especially vol. i.) ; and his 
" Essay on the Stoics," in the " Oxford Essays for 1858." 

2 See the essay on the Philosophy of Philo, in vol. i. of Pro- 
fessor Jowett's work on " St. Paul's Epistles." 



SERM. V. 



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153 



pretensions of Christianity to be a Divine revelation, 
and attempted to establish philosophy as a rival to its 
claims. They were not the first enemies that Chris- 
tianity had encountered, but they were the first edu- 
cated men who had carefully examined and rejected 
its claims. Their history 1 may be told in a few 
words, though it embraces about three centuries, 
commencing approximately from the year a.d. 200. 
It divides itself into three epochs. In the first, the 
movement was a metaphysical speculation ; in the 
second, a political organisation ; in the third, a 
logical system. 2 During about a century and a half, 
the ideas were gradually evolved from those miscel- 
laneous sources which I have just now indicated. 
Plotinus is the great writer of this first phase of 
the intellectual movement ; and the wide effects of 
it may be seen even within the precincts of the 
Christian church in the system of Gnosticism. The 
second, or the political movement, is contracted to 
the narrow space of the reign of the Emperor Julian. 
It was the attempt to carry out the views of these 

1 The materials for their history, besides the study of their 
writings, and of Creuzer's Proleg. to Plotinus' Ennead., are to 
be found in Gibbon (" Decline and Fall," ch. 23) ; in the two 
works by Kingsley, to which reference has been already made ; 
in Lewes's " Biographical Hist, of Philosophy ;" in Maurice's 
"Hist, of Philosophy;" and in Donaldson's "Hist, of Gr. Lit," 
(ch. 53, 57). 

2 The first movement is from about a.d. 200 — 360 ; the second, 
360—363 ; the third, 363—550. 



154 



THE TRINITY. 



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unbelievers by political measures which must ever give 
an historic interest to the brief, the brilliant reign 
of that emperor. Educated in the opinions of these 
philosophers, and fortified with an intense dislike to 
Christianity, Julian felt that it was not enough to 
persecute our holy religion, but that an attempt 
must be made to disprove it, as well as political 
inducement held out for uprooting it. The sudden 
death of Julian in the Parthian wars put an end to 
this system ; and it was not merely in vexation, but 
in the despairing conviction that his death would 
cut short the great object of his life, and that 
Christianity would henceforth triumph unimpeded, 
that, when wounded in the battle-field, he died, 
exclaiming : " Thou hast conquered, Galilean ! " 
Such was the fate of the political movement. The 
third phase of existence of the school to which I 
have alluded, is found, when, in the century after the 
death of Julian, Proclus attempted to recommend his 
ideas to the convictions of men by investing them 
with the rigour of a logical system. 

It will be sufficient to have indicated thus much 
of their history. 

Now among the many doctrines which this school 
of philosophers assailed, one of the principal was the 
doctrine of the Holy Trinity. They did not attempt 
to deny it ; but they tried to show that it was only an 
imperfect attempt to express that which their science 



SERM. V. 



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155 



could detect by unassisted reason, viz. that Deity 
must exist in three states, — as simple existence, — 
as intelligent existence, — and as active creative 
existence. 1 The first was the Father; the second, 
the Word; the third, the Spirit. Thus, to them the 
Christian doctrine was no new truth ; it was rather 
a formula of which they professed to be able to sug- 
gest a better interpretation. 

How then did the Church of that age meet this 
view? It met it by reasserting the doctrine as it 
conceived the Apostles to have communicated it. 
It professed that instead of attempting to penetrate 
the depths of the Infinite Mind, it was content to 
rest in what was revealed; that instead of trying 
to know God that it might love Him, the Church 
sought to love God that it might know Him. Yet 
obliged to meet this scepticism with a definite state- 
ment, it was compelled to array the truths of revela- 
tion in the precise dogmas of technical philosophy; 
and so it gave expression to its thoughts in the 
Athanasian Creed. It is almost certain indeed that 
that formula was not the composition of the heroic 
Christian apologist whose name it bears. It pro- 
bably originated in Western France in the fifth 
century, but it entirely gave expression to the 

1 These are explained in a creditable manner in Lewes's " Bio- 
graphical History of Philosophy." 



156 



THE TRINITY. 



SERM. V. 



thoughts of orthodox Christendom. 1 And it is in 
reference to its age that its value must be tested. 
I may be permitted to say, that I can have no 
sympathy with those who would tear it from our 
Prayer-book, because they test it by our modern 
ideas, and examine it apart from its historical posi- 
tion. The man would be despised who, looking 
on one of the crude works which marked the first 
revival of Art, should persist in criticising those 
attempts by perfect modern styles, and who could 
not appreciate the efforts observable to throw off the 
stiffness which cramped the early movement, and 
to gain a knowledge of correct form, of delicate 
modelling, of true shading, of natural colouring, 
because they do not accord with the modern stand- 
ard of attainment. We should claim that those works 
must be estimated by the light of the age in which 
they were produced. Similarly, surely, the Athana- 
sian Creed ought to be estimated in reference to the 
circumstances which created it. It was the Church 
compelled to arm itself in the weapons of logic used 
by its assailants. It is not the form in which the 
Church would have preferred to record its faith 2 ; 
and when we still use it, we read it as an historic 

1 See Waterland's " Critical History cf the Athanasian Creed." 

2 This may be inferred from the fact that the creeds became 
more complex as the interval which separated them from the 
Apostles' time increased. The earliest creed, perhaps, is in 



SERM. V. 



THE TRINITY. 



157 



memorial, a protest against heresies once prevalent 
and analogically applicable to ourselves; the 'vi- 
gorous expression of belief of men who lived and 
strove for the faith which they loved unto the 
death. 

With these remarks we may leave the considera- 
tion of those early controversies of the Trinity, — 
controversies which however I shall show in the 
sequel have been recently revived, and pass on 
to the consideration of another, which still numbers 
many adherents, — the rise of Socinianism at the time 
of the Reformation. 

A thousand years separate these two great crises 
of intellectual speculation. When the latter of the 
two arose, Europe was no longer the same. The 
old centres of civilisation had shifted, the old forms 
of government had vanished; the nations had 
changed, the very languages had disappeared. One 
power alone had survived the deluge which had 
changed the face of Europe, viz. Christianity. It 
had been the ark of refuge through that deluge. It 

St. Paul's first Epistle to Corinth, (xv. 3 — 8.) The next is that 
called "the Apostles' Creed." The next is the creed which 
was proposed and rejected in the Council of Nicasa ; the 
next is the creed actually adopted ; the next is the one adopted 
by the Council of Constantinople (a.d. 381), which is the one 
which now passes under the name of the " Nicene Creed ;" the 
next is the Athanasian. The authority for some of these latter 
statements is the historian Socrates. 



158 



THE TRINITY. 



SERM. V. 



was now to have its claims tested by the busy 
speculation of the new world. Nor is it to be 
wondered at, that, in the general dissolution of the 
intellectual and religious system of the middle ages 
which we call the Reformation, spirits should arise 
to explore the very foundations of our faith. It 
was at this time accordingly that Sozini 1 started 
the theory of modern Unitarianism, by attempting 
to show that the Apostles had not really taught 
the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, but that, on the 
contrary, the doctrine had arisen in the early cen- 
turies, in the course of controversy with the Alexan- 
drian philosophers. I shall dwell for a few moments 
on these views, because they still linger in society, 
and still receive acceptance from many. The argu- 
ments which are adduced in denial of the doctrine 
which we believe that the Apostles taught, consist 
partly in a critical examination of Scripture passages ; 
but still more in an unconquerable objection to the 
doctrine on account of its involving a mystery. 
" How," urge they, " can the Divine Being exist 
in three persons and in one?" On the examination 
of Scripture texts 5 it is unnecessary now to say 
anything ; but I wish to add a few words in refer- 
ence to the objection that the doctrine is mysterious, 

1 For Socinus, and the Racovian School which arose from him, 
see Hallam's "Hist, of Lit.," i. 552 ; ii. 335. 



SEEM. V. 



THE TRINITY. 



159 



because it may have frequently suggested itself to 
many of you. 

The fact, that this doctrine involves a mystery, 
is so far from constituting a fair ground for its re- 
jection, that it agrees in this respect with many of 
the most allowed truths of human science. For 
the distinction is now well understood between a 
truth being apprehended and its being comprehended. 
We apprehend or recognise a fact when we know 
it to be established by evidence, but cannot explain 
it by referring it to its cause; we comprehend or 
understand it when we can view it in relation to 
its cause. A thing which is not apprehended cannot 
be believed, but the analogy of our knowledge shows 
that we believe many things which we cannot ex- 
plain or resolve into a law. We know the law of 
attraction which regulates the motions of the visiole 
universe; but no one can yet explain the nature 
of the attractive power which acts according to this 
law. Or, to add an example from the world of 
organised nature, we may see the same truth in 
the animal or vegetable kingdoms. We know not 
in what consist the common phenomena of sleep 
or of life ; and we are equally ignorant of the final 
causes which have led the Creator to lavish his gifts 
in creating thousands of species of the lower orders 
of animals with few properties of enjoyment or 
of use ; or to scatter in the unseen parts of the 



160 



THE TRINITY. 



SEEM. V. 



petals of flowers the profusion of beautiful colours. 
In truth, the peculiarity of modern inductive science 
is, that it professes to explain nothing. It rests 
content with generalising phenomena into their most 
comprehensive statement, and there it pauses; it in 
no case connects them with an ultimate cause. And 
if truths are thus received undoubtingly in science 
when yet they cannot be explained, why must an 
antecedent determination to disbelieve mystery in 
religion be allowed to outweigh any amount of 
positive evidence which can be adduced to substan- 
tiate those mysteries ? 1 

"We have now noticed the two great attacks on the 
doctrine of the Holy Trinity which have been marked 
in history; the first, that which accepted the Trinity, 
but explained it away ; the other, that which denied 
the doctrine on the ground of its mystery. Yet 
the subject would hardly be complete if I were not 
to notice with a brief allusion the fact that an 

1 It is fair to state that the antecedent objections which are 
urged against the doctrine are of two distinct kinds ; — (1st.) 
arising from the unwillingness to believe a thing incomprehen- 
sible, which is the one refuted in the text ; — (2nd.) arising 
from the impossibility of accepting a truth contradictory to reason, 
in believing three persons to be one, and one to be three, at one 
and the same time. This latter objection is of course reasonable 
in itself, but incorrect in its application ; inasmuch as this is not 
the Scripture account of the doctrine of the Trinity, but the 
clumsy and self-contradictory statement of unintelligent advo- 
cates of it. 



SEEM. V. 



THE TEINITY. 



161 



attempt has arisen in Christian writers during the 
present century, alike in Germany and in England, 
to revive speculations, similar to those of the old 
philosophers of Alexandria, in defence of this great 
doctrine. One honoured layman, whose influence 
was great equally in letters and theology during the 
first thirty years of this century, poet, critic, philo 
sopher, theologian alike 1 , has been the parent mind 
of a school of earnest and deep thinkers, of whom 
some are gathered to their home above, some still 
live to serve the church on earth. It ill becomes 
so young a student as myself to criticise those 
views ; it must suffice to have named them. I may 
venture, however, with all humility, to remark that 
they do not appear to me to convey any help to- 
wards elucidating this great doctrine ; nevertheless, 
if others find that they afford them support, I 
would be the last to tear from them the reed on 
which they support themselves, frail though I fear it 
to be. 

1 S. T. Coleridge. A little book exists on the effects of Cole- 
ridge on theology, entitled " Modern Anglican Theology by 
the Rev. J. H. Rigg." The friends of the writers whom he has 
criticised, will naturally consider the book very unfair. They look 
at the works through the writers of them, Mr. Rigg looks at the 
writers through their works ; hence he has certainly, in most cases, 
especially in that of Mr. Jowett, presented a caricature of those 
whose works he discusses ; and has not unfrequently imputed to 
them as positive teaching, ideas which are only to be found in 
their writings as incipient tendencies ; but in spite of these and 
other defects the book is instructive. 

M 



162 



THE TRINITY. 



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Having now completed the brief history of this 
great doctrine, having seen what we are not to 
believe, let us turn in conclusion to see what we 
ought to believe of the nature of God, and what 
the lessons are which we should carry away from 
the consideration of it. 

We have asserted that we are to believe that 
the Divine nature exists under three entirely dis- 
tinct classes of relations, which through poverty 
of language we call existence in three Persons. We 
must be careful, however, when we assert this, 
not to reduce the Divine nature to similarity with 
the human, not to commit, in fact, almost the very 
error into which men of old fell in supposing that 
the God whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain, 
is like to birds and beasts and creeping things. 
The Divine Being is three persons; but by this 
we only mean that the personal element in man 
is the analogy under which God has been pleased 
to convey to us ideas of His own nature and of the 
relations which He sustains to us. Revelation, when 
teaching truths of the world unseen, must of neces- 
sity be compelled to present them by comparison 
with things that are known. It must, therefore, 
select its illustrations either from the world of matter 
which is known to us through the senses, or the 
world of mind and feeling known to us through 
consciousness. And thus to a sensuous people like 



SERM. V. 



THE TRINITY. 



163 



the ancient Jews, God was represented as having 
arms and hands, or as being swayed by human 
passion, by anger, hate, repentance; and to Chris- 
tians, God is described, in that religion which was 
to commend itself to the more civilised nations of 
Europe, as having the higher qualities of mind, and 
as invested with the ineradicable and mysterious 
attribute of personality. 1 

Yet, though the conception is far nobler than the 
old Jewish view, we must not allow ourselves to 
suppose that it is more literally true. Just as we 
clo not attribute to God a body or human passions, 
but merely mean that He acts to us as though He 
possessed them; so when we attribute to Him 
thought or personality, we must not narrow down 
the idea of his omniscient intuition by supposing 
it contracted within the limits of inference which 
govern man's finite intelligence, or gifted with that 
limited independence which appertains to human 
personality. The discoveries of science ought to 
teach us that we really can scarcely form any posi- 
tive idea of God's nature. 2 If we track the infinity 

1 The view here advocated is an extension to the doctrine 
of the Divine nature, of the interpretation of the subject of analogy, 
which was applied by Archbishop King to the subject of predes- 
tination. See Whately's edition of King's Sermon ; Copleston's 
" Discourses on Predestination." 

2 The impossibility that a mind, constituted as the human 
mind is, should employ itself successfully in speculations on the 

m 2 



264 



THE TRINITY. 



SERM. V. 



of creation, we see that each increased power of 
our instruments reveals to us illimitable profusion 
in creation; the telescope revealing the troop of 
worlds stretching to an infinity of greatness, and 
the microscope a world of more and more minute 
life, stretching to an infinity of minuteness ; or when 
we turn from the infinite in space to the infinite 
in time, if we look backward we see written in the 
rocks of the world the signs of creative life stretching 
through ages anterior to human history ; or if we 
look forward, we can detect by delicate mathemati- 
cal calculation an amazing scheme of Providence 
providing for the conservation of harmony in the 
attractions of the heavenly bodies in cycles of in- 
calculable time in the distant future. And when, 
having pondered all these things, we think of the 
Being that has arranged them by His providence 
and conserves them by His power, what notion can 
we really form of His nature ? What notion of the 
wonderful originality evinced in the conception of 
creation, what of the profusion shown in the execu- 
tion of it, what of the power in its conservation? 
His nature is not merely infinite, it is unlike any- 
thing human, and we must turn away with the 
feeling that when we compare that infinite Being 
with man, and confine our ideas of His illimitable 

subject of infinity, lias been developed from another (the psycho- 
logical) point of view in Mr. Mansel's " Bampton Lectures." 



SERM. V. 



THE TRINITY. 



165 



vastness and His inscrutable existence by the 
notion of the narrow personality which is delegated 
to us finite creatures who live but for a day on 
this small spot of earth, lost amid the millions of 
worlds which glitter in creation, we may be sure 
that the Divine nature as really transcends the 
earthly description of it, as the universe exceeds 
this world; and though we may thankfully accept 
the description of God as having three personalities 
as the noblest to which we can attain as men, and 
as enough for our present wants in this world, yet 
let us never doubt that really the Divine nature 
is vastly nobler ; and let us bow with adoring thank- 
fulness in meditating on the idea which we are 
permitted to attain, imperfect though it be, of that 
mysterious essence. 

Yet though the idea of God in three persons may 
be held to be thus speculatively imperfect, let us 
never forget that it is practically all-sufficient for 
us. For it teaches us the great truth that He 
acts to us as though He did literally sustain the 
characters of three wholly distinct persons, and 
that He demands from us the duties which would 
belong to us if He were so. 

If we are thus to believe of God, what is the 
lesson which this great doctrine that God exists 
and acts to us as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, 
ought to convey to us? It is mainly the wondrous 

M 3 



166 



THE TRINITY. 



SERM. V. 



thought that this glorious Being is willing to stoop 
to be our friend, that He whose happiness is com- 
plete in its own infinity, is moved by His own 
pure eternal love to win us to Himself. Eestless 
(to speak after the manner of men) to secure our 
happiness, all these blessed persons of the glorious 
Godhead are engaged to secure it. It is God the 
Father whom we have grieved by our sins; and 
yet He loves us as a father still; and to rescue 
us from our misery, He has designed the great 
scheme of salvation, and sent God the Son to dwell 
on this earth as a man, as a man of sorrows and 
of poverty, to remove by His atoning death the im- 
pediments which, secret perhaps to us, stand in the 
way of our salvation, and to exhibit the pattern of a 
faultless human being, that we may follow his steps ; 
and lastly, after God the Son had withdrawn from 
the earth, God the Spirit, the ever-blessed Comforter, 
has descended to dwell constantly in the hearts of 
all men that invite His presence, cheering their 
guilty spirits, stirring them up to the love of 
holiness, hallowing them for a meetness for the in- 
heritance ot heaven. Behold what manner of love 
God has shown to us! Behold the Triune God 
engaged in the salvation of each one of ourselves ! 

And can you delay to yield to Him your hearts, 
your wills, your affections? If you have sinned, or 
are tempted to sin, either in deed, or word, or 



SJ3KM. V. 



THE TRINITY. 



167 



thought, remember that it is not merely sin against a 
law, but that you are verily grieving a loving father, 
even the father, God; if you are living a careless, 
half- religious life, remember that you are perpetrat- 
ing the ingratitude of making the sufferings of the 
Eternal Son void as regards your souls ; if you are 
neglecting prayer, neglecting earnest supplications 
to heaven for holiness, you are declining to avail 
yourself of that unspeakable gift of the Spirit's 
help which is for all that ask. 

Forget, if you like, all those hard historical and 
logical discussions with which I have perhaps mis- 
employed your precious time in this sermon ; forget, 
if you please, the nobler views of God's personality 
to which I have striven to raise you. Think of 
Him, if you choose, only as three persons. But 
forget not that His eye is now upon each one of 
you, that He seeks to have each one's heart. And 
if, in the portion of leisure which is now afforded 
us 1 , any of us are about to go forth in quest of 
health or instruction to foreign lands, let us never 
forget that when we have passed the Straits which 
insulate our native land, and are emancipated from 
the restraints of English society and the sanctity- of 
English sabbaths, yet God's eye is over us and 
His presence nigh to us. Let us never forget that 

1 This Sermon was preached immediately before the commence- 
ment of the Long Vacation. 

m 4 



168 



THE TRINITY. 



SERM. V. 



in whatever scene we may find ourselves, whether 
lost amid the thousands of the crowded city, or 
halting beneath the humble roof of the mountain 
peasant, still none of our ways are unobserved on 
high ; and be it our perpetual consolation that there 
is instant access for us to God's throne by prayer; 
nay, that if there be in us any good desire, He sees 
it ere we shape it into words, and from His invisible 
throne, swifter than the speed of thought, there 
descends the answer of love. Let each of us strive 
to use the leisure time on which we are now enter- 
ing not only as a means of securing a higher mental 
cultivation, but also for gaining a deeper commu- 
nion with the God of glory. For God the Father 
loves us, God the Son has redeemed us, and the 
Holy Spirit will, if we will ask Him, turn us from 
sin, and doubt, and half-heartedness, to the love of 
Himself, and will fit us for that heaven where, 
no longer trammelled by sin and darkened by ig- 
norance, we shall enjoy the beatific vision, and find 
our everlasting happiness in communing with the 
Divine Being face to face. 



SERMON VI. 



THE ATONEMENT. 
(Preached before the University, May 15th, 1859.) 

Mark ix. 2. 

And after six days Jesus taheth with him Peter, and 
James, and John, and leadeth them up into an high 
mountain apart by themselves: and he was trans- 
figured before them. 

The pilgrim traveller who wanders through the land 
once hallowed by the bodily presence of our Blessed 
Saviour, never fails to have his attention attracted 
by the sight of one hill which stands conspicuous 
alike by the beauty of natural features and the inte- 
rest of traditional associations. The hill is Mount 
Tabor. 1 From whatever position the traveller may 
approach it, as he reaches the escarpment which 
overlooks from all sides the wide plain of the river 
Kishon, in which it stands, the mountain comes into 

1 Stanley's " Palestine," pp. 343—392. 



170 



THE ATONEMENT. 



S£RM. VI. 



view rising in queenlike majesty from the surrounding 
plain. Standing alone like an island in a sea, with j 
its ragged slopes rounded into a conical outline, it 
presents the appearance of cheerful fertility; aged 
olives, with their trunks gnarled by time, besides 
other trees, are dotted over its surface, while the 
outline of rude fortification, almost coeval with our 
Saviour's life, is discernible, forming the coronet of 
its summit. We cannot wonder that ancient tradi- 
tion should have selected this spot as eminently 
" the mountain apart," to which some of the Evan- 
gelists allude in their narrative of the scene of the 
Transfiguration ; we cannot wonder that those whom 
the superstition of a pilgrimage, or the excitement 
of a liberal curiosity, has at various times attracted 
to the spot, have looked with uncommon emotion on 
a mountain which to its natural beauty added the 
interest of supposed connection with one of the most 
marvellous, the most poetical passages of our 
Saviour's earthly career. 

It is cruel to dash away such a belief ; yet the 
rigour of geographical criticism compels us to doubt 
whether that spot can be the real scene of this event. 
For the comparison of the narrative of St. Mark 
■with that of the other Evangelists shows clearly 
that the words, " He leadeth them into a high moun- 
tain apart," 1 do not refer to the mountain, as if the 

1 Mark ix. 2. 



SERM. VI. 



THE ATONEMENT. 



171 



mountain were described as standing " apart," but 
merely meant, " He leadeth them apart into a moun- 
tain," i. e. "apart" from the hurry of men, " apart" 
from the other disciples to whom it was not vouch- 
safed to gaze on the mystic vision. Accordingly, if 
we look with care into the history, we find that our 
Lord was, at the time of the event of the Transfigura- 
tion, far removed from Mount Tabor, in the hilly dis- 
trict either of Xturasa, or of the north-east of Galilee. 

Mount Tabor will still continue to be a spot of 
interest alike to the man of taste and to the student 
of history ; and the traveller will still turn aside to 
climb to its summit, and gaze upon the panorama 
outspread to his view ; but as he looks around him 
he must content himself with the remembrance of 
the stirring events of which that scene has been the 
undoubted witness, without associating the wild 
beauty of the mountain summit with the sacred 
history of our Blessed Lord. That hill, if it had 
voice, could testify to many an exciting scene which 
has taken place in the plain at its base. It heard 
the shout of victory which Deborah raised over the 
discomfited host of Sisera. Not far from it occurred 
the midnight panic which the hero Gideon struck 
into the camp of the Midianitish hordes. Hard by 
stood the hills where Saul fell by the hand of his 
armour-bearer ; and from age to age, down to the 
memory of living men, it has witnessed the surging 



172 



THE ATONEMENT. 



SERM. VI. 



waves of successive invasions roll around its base ; 
but the marvel of the Transfiguration it cannot have 
witnessed. The scene of that event must be sought 
elsewhere, far off in the solitudes to the north-east 
of Galilee. There, in some unknown spot, amid 
the spurs of the snowy range, from whose roots 
bubble forth the sources of the river Jordan, was 
enacted that marvellous event, when Jesus was 
transfigured before His startled disciples. We may 
regret the impossibility of knowing the exact spot ; 
we may be sorry to be obliged to think of the event 
without connecting it with the place ; but we really 
lose nothing by the circumstance ; for the lessons 
taught us by the Bible are spiritual, not temporal ; 
moral, not geographical 1 ; the conditions of place or 
of date matter little ; the truth taught is eternal ; 
and we, who in the peaceful quiet of this church are 
now turning our thoughts to that striking event, 
may realise its eternal truth, and gather its eternal 
lessons more really than if we could determine the 
site of its occurrence, or kindle our sympathies by a 
pilgrimage to the spot. 

Yet if it were our object to find interest in the 

1 Some observations will be found in Mr. Jowett's work on 
" St. Paul," (vol. i. pp. 29 — 31, 1st edit.) on the comparative un- 
importance of geographical and historical knowledge as means 
of gaining a knowledge of the minds of the Scripture writers. It 
aids us in reproducing the external scene, but does not penetrate 
into the internal spirit. 



SERM. VI. 



THE ATONEMENT. 



173 



mere narrative, and poetry in the mere scene, the 
real site, amidst some craggy fastness of northern 
Palestine, would supply it hardly less vividly than 
the beauteous form and picturesque situation of the 
solitary Tabor. For we should realise to ourselves the 
fact that our Blessed Saviour, after having exercised 
His ministry of mercy for more than two years 1 , was 
now a fugitive, wandering near the frontiers of the land 
of Tyre and Sidon, in order to escape the observation 
of the spies sent down by the authorities of Jerusalem 
to track His footsteps ; and that, when thus cir- 
cumstanced, He one day withdrew into a mountain, 
accompanied by His three favourite disciples, Peter, 
James, and John, to pray. There, while the disciples 
were left sleeping, while He Himself was drawing 
nigh in prayer to His Heavenly Father, and His 
Heavenly Father drawing nigh to Him, the powers 
of the eternal world, over which He had reigned 'ere 
He came to this earth, broke in upon Him ; the glory 
which tie had with the Father before the world was, 
overshadowed Him ; His face shone as the sun ; and 
His raiment became white as the light. The veil 
which hides the unseen was lifted, and strange visi- 
tants from that world stood beside Him. The 

1 The best harmony of the Gospels which the writer of this 
Sermon has ever met with is that by the traveller, Dr. Robinson. 
It is published in an English form very cheaply by the Religious 
Tract Society, and is accompanied with very judicious notes. 



174 



THE ATONEMENT. 



SERM. VI« 



radiance of that glory broke in upon the still 
slumbers of the beloved disciples, and as they woke, 
a bright cloud was overshadowing them, and they 
feared as they entered into the cloud. And a mys- 
terious voice was heard, which said : " This is my 
beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And 
when they had looked round about, they saw no man 
any more save Jesus only with themselves." 1 

Such was the scene. We need not surely pause 
to prove that it was not a mere dream of the 
three Apostles. This idea is forbidden by the fact 
that, in imparting the narrative of the transaction 
to those evangelists who have handed down the 
history of it to us, they have exactly marked 
the line which separates that part of the vision 
which was taking place, when in the half-uncon- 
sciousness of persons awaking from sleep, they hardly 
knew what they said, from that portion which 
occurred after they had become cognisant of events 
around them. 2 Above all, such an idea is forbidden 
by the fact, which will be more fully explained 
presently, that from that moment our Saviour's 
teaching completely changed: He began henceforth 
to divulge the fact of His own sufferings. 3 An 
event must have been real to Him which forms an 

1 Matt. xvii. 1—13; Mark ix. 2—10 : Luke ix. 28—36. 

2 Mark ix. 6 ; Luke ix. 32. 

3 Matt. xvii. 22, 23 ; xx. 17 ; Mark ix. 12, 13 ; Luke ix. 44. 



SERM. vr. 



THE ATONEMENT. 



175 



epoch in His teaching and His life. Resting accord- 
ingly with confidence on its reality, believing that 
it was not a mere sleeping dream of the Apostles, 
but a great though mysterious fact, that at that 
moment heaven and earth were brought nigh, and 
J esus transfigured in celestial brightness, and visited 
by. spirits from the world unseen, and that the 
Apostles were permitted to catch a glimpse of the 
last rays of that departing glory, let us ask ourselves 
what was the purpose and intention of that won- 
drous revelation of things from within the veil? 
What was its meaning? what relation had it to the 
Apostles? what relation had it (we ask it without 
irreverence) to the Saviour? 

It has been common to suppose that it had no 
meaning to the Saviour himself, but that its sole 
object and purpose was to instruct the disciples; 
accordingly it has been thought to be a parable, as 
it were, acted, in order to figure, by the meeting 
of Moses and Elias with Christ, the union of the 
old dispensations of the Law and the Prophets, of 
which they were distinguished representatives, with 
the new, which Christ came to proclaim. A mo- 
ment's consideration, however, will at once lead us 
to perceive that such an interpretation is paltry, 
and utterly unworthy of the magnificence of the 
scene. God does not thus act either in nature or 
in religion ; he does not inaugurate mighty agencies 



176 



THE ATONEMENT. 



SERM. VI. 



to usher in insignificant results. A deeper meaning 
must therefore be sought; and it may easily be 
found if we look a little more closely into the 
evangelists' narrative. 

St. Matthew and St. Mark alike inform us 1 that, 
when the vision had ceased, our Lord charged His 
disciples that they should tell it to no man till 
the Son of Man should be risen from the dead; and 
that it gave rise to a declaration by our Lord of 
the sufferings which he should shortly undergo. 
And St. Luke adds a fact which explains why the 
conversation had turned to this subject, when he 
says that Moses and Elias, as they appeared in glory, 
spake of Jesus' decease which he should accomplish 
at Jerusalem. 2 So it was, it appears, the subject 
of our Blessed Saviour's coming sufferings which 
was occupying the thoughts of those visitants from 
the other world; it was this which brought them 
back to the earth which they had so long left; and 
it was some of the last of those notes of sadness 
which the disciples heard as they awoke from their 
sleep, which led them to enter into discourse with 
our Saviour on the subject of His sufferings, and 
which caused Him to charge them, as though they 
had been permitted to learn a secret of the coming 
time which was not to be divulged to the uninitiated, 

1 Matt. xvii. 9 ; Mark ix. 9. 

2 Luke ix. 31. 



SEEM. VI. 



THE ATONEMENT. 



177 



to tell no man until the Son of Man should be risen 
from the dead. 

If we would fully understand the bearing of this 
conversation about our Lord's sufferings, we must 
also take into account that strange fact to which 
allusion has been previously made, that from the 
time of the event of the Transfiguration, our Lord's 
teaching underwent a change, in that henceforth 
He announced that He was to suffer and to die. 
Heretofore He had not announced this. He had 
taught that He was the Messiah; henceforth He 
taught that He was the Messiah who was to suffer. 
Heretofore He had taught that He had come to 
fulfil the predictions of the ancient Hebrew prophets, 
to found that kingdom of power on which the hopes 
of generation after generation of the Jewish people 
had been set, and after the glory of which their 
longing eyes were straining, as they went to the 
grave unblessed by the expected day of liberty 
which was to free them from the nations which 
oppressed them. Henceforth He taught them that 
He was to set up that kingdom by means of Himself 
suffering, that he was to fulfil in Himself the affect- 
ing descriptions of the prophets : " He was cut off 
from the land of the living; for the transgression 
of my people He was stricken." 1 



1 Isai. liii. 8. 
N 



178 



THE ATONEMENT. 



SEKM. VI 



The reason why our Lord had hitherto kept back 
this doctrine is not hard of discovery. It was not, 
as one of the rationalistic critics of Germany 1 has 
suggested, that He found the Jewish people so 
brutal, so unapproachable by moral teaching, that 
He began to adopt the plan of trying to reach them 
by an appeal to sorrow, and to court death Himself 
to attest the honesty of His own teaching. The 
real cause was this: that our Lord first taught 
morality before He taught faith. He first taught 
His hearers to listen to Moses before He expected 
that they would listen to Him ; He first taught them 
to arouse themselves from sin by repentance, before 
He communicated the intelligence of His own suffer- 
ings, which were to be the means of redeeming them 
from the misery of sin. Therefore, after He had 
condescended to devote more than two years of 
His ministry to proclaim Himself the Messiah, the 
Messiah who wished to gather round him reformed 
men and honest hearts, He devoted the remaining 
portion of hardly a year to proclaim Himself the 
Messiah who was to suffer, — the Messiah who, by 
His death, was to make an end of sin, and to bring in 
an everlasting righteousness. 

From this point of view we can in some humble 
measure see what was the purpose and meaning 



1 De Wette, " De Mort. Chr. Exp." ii. sect. 23. 



serm. vi. THE ATONEMENT. 170 

of the mysterious event of the Transfiguration. It 
was not merely, we venture to think, meant as a 
lesson to the disciples, a lesson to teach them the 
importance of Christ's sufferings, to inform them that 
those sufferings occupied the attention of departed 
prophets and of inhabitants of the world unseen, nor 
to convince them of the glory of His character; but 
it had a real use and meaning also in reference to 
our Blessed Lord, It taught the three disciples these 
truths indeed, and doubtless the lesson was never 
forgotten. In reference to St. James, we know it 
not; but in the case of St. Peter, we have His own 
attestation, shortly before he was about to put off 
this tabernacle, that he had been an eye-witness of 
Christ's majesty, when he had seen his glory on the 
holy mount. 1 And in the case of St. John we may 
well conjecture, that when, a generation later, he 
wrote his Gospel in extreme old age, and declared 
— M The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, 
and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only 
begotten of the Father/' 2 — the thoughts of the 
Apostle were travelling back, across the memories 
of sixty years, to the scene which he had once 
witnessed amid the bleak cliffs of the Syrian moun- 
tains, when the face of Jesus had shone like the sun, 
and His raiment glistened as the light. 



1 2 Pet. i. 14—18. 2 John i. 14. 

n 2 



180 



THE ATONEMEXT. 



SERM. VI, 



While however the event thus instructed the 
disciples, we cannot doubt, from what has been before 
said, that it had a real use and meaning also to our 
Blessed Lord. We are wrong in levelling the my- 
stery of those few events in our Lord's life, when 
He was overshadowed by the powers of the world 
unseen, to the standard of our pigmy explanations. 
In that outburst of temptation, for example, which 
He endured in the wilderness at the commencement 
of His ministry, there was doubtless, beside and 
above all that is common to man and an example 
to man, a real vicarious and mysterious endurance 
of temptation by our Lord as part of the system 
of mediation which He had undertaken. And in 
that mysterious agony of dread and terror which 
befell the Saviour in the olive garden of Gethsemane, 
it was not under the pressure of ordinary mortal 
horror that He was bowed down; we may well 
believe that there was then going forward between 
the soul of our Divine Redeemer and His Heavenly 
Father some secret transaction connected with hu- 
man redemption, that He was verily drinking our 
cup of sorrow, and sweating drops of blood in the 
vicarious endurance of our load of sin, that it was 
the weight of the sins of the world under which 
He was staggering which made Him breathe out, in 
the exhaustion of His agony, "If it be possible, 
let this cup pass from me." 1 

1 This view of the meaning of our Lord's Temptation and 



SERM. VI. 



THE ATONEMENT. 



181 



In like manner with these two events of the 
Temptation and the Agony in Gethsemane, we may 
well believe that the similarly mysterious event of 
the Transfiguration had a meaning to Christ over 
and above that which it had for the Apostles. We 
may not hope to understand that meaning; yet, if 
we may conjecture, we can conceive that that mo- 
ment was the baptism into His life of suffering. 
We can imagine that the spirits were sent forth 
as heralds to tell Him of the interest with which 
his work of atonement was regarded in the world 
invisible. We can conjecture that the reason why 
angels were not chosen to convey that message to 
Him, but rather the spirits of departed men, such 
as Moses and Elias, was, because they were spirits 
who had tasted of human sin, and whose welfare 
depended, together with that of the universe of 
created men, upon the work of suffering which Jesus 
was to commence. We can imagine that the vision 
of Divine glory which was vouchsafed to Him, the 
momentary taste of the heavenly state, was to 
strengthen Him for that work, and to cheer Him with 
the prospect of the glory which He had left, and to 
which He was to return. And we may possibly 

Agony is worked out with equal talent and pathos in the two 
last Sermons of a scholarlike and suggestive volume by the present 
Dean (G. H. S. Johnson) of Wells. Compare also Newman's 
" Sermons to Mixed Congregations " (Sermon on the Agony), 

n 3 



182 



THE ATONEMENT. 



SERM. VI. 



conjecture, finally, that the voice from the excellent 
glory, u This is my beloved Son in whom I am well 
pleased," was again uttered in order to anoint Him 
for His mission of suffering, as once before it had 
been uttered at the baptism in the Jordan to anoint 
Him for His mission of teaching. 

More than this we must not conjecture; yet 
thus far, I trust, the narrative of the evangelists, 
as we have presented it, warrants us in venturing. 
More than this we need not know; for the subject 
has taught us a lesson large enough already, if it 
has fixed our thoughts on the sufferings of Christ, 
and made us realise the fact, that it is not the life 
but rather the death of Christ which is important 
as the means of our salvation; not His life as an 
example, but His death as an atoning sacrifice. 

It is so much the more important that we should 
feel this, because in recent years the belief has been 
fast spreading in our church that the death of our 
Blessed Lord was not for the purpose of reconciling 
God to man by removing the obstacles, known or un- 
known, which stood in the way of human salvation, 
but only for the purpose of reconciling man to God, 
by proclaiming to mankind God's love, and by ex- 
emplifying the majesty of suffering and the dignity 
of self-sacrifice. 1 The assertion of this view has 

1 The view that the Atonement only reconciled man to God 
appears to be that of Mr. Jowett ("Essay on Atonement," in his 



SERM. VI. 



THE ATONEMENT. 



183 



been a natural reaction against the rash statements 
in reference to this great doctrine which have 
not unfrequently been put forth ; statements which 
venture beyond the cautious teaching of the inspired 
Apostles on the subject, and are constructed in ig- 
norance of the development which the doctrine has 
received in the progress of the history of the church. 
Such statements, in which men dare to measure 
God's infinite nature, and assert that the reasons 
can be fully understood why God was unable to 
forgive man without an atonement, frequently run 
counter to those ineradicable instincts of justice and 
truth which the God of nature has planted in the 
moral sense of man, as the unassailable foundation 
of moral truth against which shallow, humanly -in- 
vented systems of theology dash themselves in vain. 
Accordingly it has been from the high and noble 
motive of opposing these rash theories, that the 
view to which I allude has been advocated. It has 
met with the approval, since the commencement 
of the present century, as will be known to many 
of you, of men who have been, or who are, the honour 

work on St. Paul, vol. ii. 1st edit.) ; that it was a great example 
of self-sacrifice is the view of Mr. Maurice ("Essay on Atone- 
ment") and of the late lamented Mr. Robertson (i. 9. iii. 7). 
Abelard's view was also similar. The encomium bestowed a few 
lines lower is meant to include the whole body of educated 
theologians in the present century who have, more or less, formed 
their views by the study of Coleridge or of the modern literature 
of Germany. 

n 4 



184 



THE ATONEMENT. 



SERM. VI. 



of our church, the ornaments of our universities, 
the glory of our literature, — men whose high, moral, 
and intellectual worth is beyond praise, and from 
whom I could not have felt it right to dissent with- 
out this tribute of respect in honour of them. If, 
however, we have reason to believe that an alarm 
at the rash speculations of men has led them into 
an abandonment of the hallowed doctrine which 
was inculcated by our Blessed Lord and his Apostles, 
which has formed the piety of ancient saints, and 
cheered the hearts of guilt-stricken men, we may 
venture, without any charge of arrogance, to dissent 
from their criticisms, and to cling tenaciously to the 
faith once delivered to the saints. 

It is impossible, in the few remaining remarks 
of this sermon, to discuss this subject fully, yet I 
wish to point out the successive notions which have 
been held in different periods on the subject of our 
Lord's sufferings and atonement, in order that 
you may exactly understand the position which the 
view that I am opposing holds in the history of 
the doctrine, and may be better able to perceive 
the point where human speculation has failed, at 
which reason must expire in faith, and theory in 
adoration. 

To the minds of the Apostles the subject was 
beset with no difficulties. Trained in the idea that 
God was in some inexplicable way approachable by 



SERM. VI. 



THE ATONEMENT. 



185 



sacrifice, they beheld in the death of our Blessed 
Lord the realisation of their religious aspirations, 
the fulfilment of the Jewish sacrificial types, the 
true offering for human guilt. 1 They believed, they 
theorised not ; but they prayed, they put their trust 
in Christ's merits, and in the depth of their own 
religious consciousness they realised the joyful ex- 
perience that their characters were changed through 
the power of that death; and, in the gladness of 
pardoned hearts, and the energy of renewed wills, 
they went forth to proclaim to others the blessedness 
of which they themselves had been made partakers. 

But time passed on. The Apostles one by one 
were gathered to their reward, and the voice of 
inspiration was finally hushed in the tomb of the 
last Apostle. There was no longer any open vision, 
and, in the centuries of thought and of criticism 
which succeeded, men began to question the cause 
of the atoning death of Christ. They rested no 
longer in the mysterious fact, the reality of which 
was re-echoed in their heart of hearts, but they 
sought a reason why an atonement had been 
necessary. 

And in those many centuries which intervened 
from the third to the eleventh age, no better answer 
could be found than that it was for the purpose 

1 See especially the Epistle to tlie Hebrews (cli. v. — x.). 



186 



THE ATONEMENT. 



SERM. VI. 



of effecting the ransom of mankind from the Evil 
One that Christ had yielded up His life. 1 The dark- 
ness of the human intellect in those ages had clouded 
even Christian truth, and the very patriarch whose 
religious zeal led him to send his missionary to 
Christianise our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, and whose 
piety is attested by the solemn Litany which we 
still repeat in our services, which was first chanted 
by him amid the depth of the Koman pestilence, 
could find no nobler solution of the reason of our 
Blessed Lord's mysterious death than the degrading 
idea that it was a price paid to the Devil for the 
redemption of man; that as men had become the 
subjects of the Evil Spirit in conquest, Christ's death 
was necessary to purchase, as by a ransom, the eman- 
cipation of the human family, and their restoration 
to their lawful king. 2 

The darkness of that night of thought passed, and 
the glad twilight of the morning of mental illumina- 
tion began to lighten up the scene. One there was 
whose name is usually identified with political events 

1 This strange fact has been brought to light by Dr. Thomson, 
in his able "Bampton Lectures" (for 1853) on the Atonement. 
See Lect. vi. p. 155, and the notes. 

2 Gregory, in Evang. ii. Horn. 25 (quoted by Dr. Thomson). 
This idea of "ransom" was hardly, indeed, more opposed to the 
moral sense than are many more recent theories ; yet it was a de- 
grading notion to assign to the Evil Spirit a duality of power 
with the Divine Being, — an idea borrowed through Manicheism 
from the duality of Eastern religions. 



SERM. VI. 



THE ATONEMENT. 



187 



in the history of one of our own Norman kings, 
but who is honoured by the student for the nobler 
labour of having consecrated his gifted intellect to 
the explanation of the doctrine of the atonement. 
" I do not seek," — these were his words, — " I do not 
seek, Lord, to penetrate Thy depths; I by no 
means think my intellect equal to them ; but I long 
to understand in some degree Thy truth, which my 
heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to 
understand that I may believe, but I believe that 
I may understand." 1 England has the honour of 
possessing his remains, and, amid the long series of 
monuments which mark the last resting-place of 
many illustrious men in the metropolitan cathedral 
of Canterbury, there exists none dedicated to a 
nobler memory than the stones which indicate the 
spot where formerly stood the shrine of Archbishop 
Anselm. 

Anselm swept away the idea that the atonement 
was a ransom paid to Satan, and substituted the 
idea that it was a debt required by the broken law 
of God. The doctrine was thus no longer illustrated 
by an analogy borrowed from conquest, but by one 
borrowed from the forms of justice. Yet even 
Anselm laid more stress upon the holiness of Christ's 
life as the fulfilment of the requirements of a broken 

1 Anselm, " Proslog." i. p. 43. His work is injured by mys- 
tical ideas of numbers, &c. 



188 



THE ATONEMENT. 



SERM. VI. 



law, than upon the atoning character of His death 
as the very essence of that mighty mystery. It 
was a thinker in Central Italy, in the early part 
of the 13th century, — a mind which was one of 
nature's prodigies, which still shines across the dis- 
tance of so many centuries like a star of the first 
magnitude, — that threw this additional beam of 
light on the doctrine. I allude to Thomas Aquinas. 1 
Nor has any further conception been subsequently 
added to the doctrine in the progress of time, save 
that, as the opinions of men on the theory of human 
punishment have improved, growing gradually to 
perfection through the successive stages of retalia- 
tion, compensation, retribution, correction, till the 
corrective idea of it has been finally substituted in 
place of the vindictive, the doctrine of the atonement 
has been conceived less under the idea of a ven- 
geance which righteous justice demanded, and more 
under that of a punishment administered for some 
undiscoverable reason as a mighty spectacle of cor- 
rection for sin, alike before angels and before men. 2 

1 "Aquinas Summa," P. iii. quest. 48. 

2 Compare Erskine's " Internal Evidences," and Dean Cony- 
beare's " Theol. Lectures " (Lect. iii. p. 358, &c). See the notes 
to the seventh lecture of Dr. Thomson's work, before quoted, 
from which several references have been taken. 

The various views on the Atonement since the inspired 
teaching of the Apostles may be classed as follows : — (1st.) The 
allegorising doctrine of the Alexandrian Fathers, reproduced by 
John Scotus Erigena, in the 9th century ; (2nd.) the Patristic 



SERM. VI. 



THE ATONEMENT. 



189 



Thus the doctrine has been traced down the path 
of history. We have seen that the fact only was 
presented by the Apostles, and that successive theo- 
ries have been attempts to explain it by reason, or 
to draw out the meaning of Scriptural statements. 
Yet, though we thankfully accept all the help which 
the ideas of sacrifice, or exchange, or ransom, or 
debt afford us, which of us is there that does not feel 
that there is some still deeper mystery unexplained, 
and that those theories are but feeble attempts to 
grasp that which transcends the powers of human 
cognition, — feeble attempts to present under the 
miniature of human analogies the magnificence of 
infinite mysteries? 

We need only look for a moment at those as- 
tonishing contributions to the evidences of the great- 
ness and goodness of God which knowledge is daily 

view of ransom from the time of Irenseus to Anselm ; (3rd.) that 
of the Schoolmen, Anselm and Aquinas ; (4th.) the Protestant 
theory of Calvin and Grotius ; (5th.) the Socinian ; (6th.) those 
held by the modern Germans since the revival of speculative 
philosophy. Materials for this history are partially supplied in 
Baur's work, " Lehre von der Versohnung," above-named. He 
considers the tendency of theory on the Atonement to have 
been toward speculations into its objective nature until the 
Reformation ; into its personal or subjective relation to the 
human soul from the Reformation to Kant's time ; subsequently 
to whose teaching, he regards the doctrine as again travelling in 
an objective direction. A brilliant sketch of this history is given 
by Mr. Jowett in the second edition of his work on St. Paul 
(ii. 568-585). 



190 



THE ATONEMENT. 



SERM. VI. 



collecting from the works of nature ; we need 
only read that sketch of the " Cosmos " of the 
physical creation, which is the last legacy be- 
queathed to the world by the ripe and honoured 
age of the patriarch of science whose remains have 
this week been attended to their grave by the regrets 
of educated Europe, to be convinced that God's 
thoughts are not like man's thoughts, that "the 
measure thereof is longer than the earth and broader 
than the sea." When, for example, science traces 
the infinity of vastness in the worlds and systems of 
worlds which roll around God's throne in twinkling 
myriads, each knowing its appointed course ; or 
descends into the proofs of his power in the infinity 
of minuteness revealed in the world of microscopic 
life ; or stretches back into the unknown depths of 
the past, and deciphers the mighty movements and 
incomprehensible purposes of the God of creation 
from the memorials of fossil life inscribed on the rocks 
of the globe ; or unfolds the magnificence of His 
power and the vastness of His resources in the ever- 
restless flow of causation which marks the present ; 
which of us can fail to meditate on those mysteries 
with reverence ? which of us can fail to feel that the 
unfathomable depths of that infinite mind are not to 
be comprehended by the finite powers of this being 
who lives for a day on one insignificant planet, an 
atom amid the mightier worlds that rule in creation; 



SERM. VI. 



THE ATONEMENT. 



191 



a being whose knowledge, where it is not simply sub- 
jective, is at least wholly relative, whether it be 
gathered from the range of earthly experience or 
from a divine revelation, which, in order to be under- 
stood, is necessarily cramped by terms and thoughts 
borrowed from earthly analogies? 1 u Canst thou by 
searching find out God? canst thou find out the 
Almighty unto perfection ? It is as high as heaven ; 
what canst thou do ? deeper than hell ; what canst 
thou know? " 

Which of us can fail to feel that such unworthy 
notions as barter and purchase, and substitution and 
insolvency, borrowed from the small range of mun- 
dane occupations, however useful they may be as 
aids for illustration, are not to be regarded as the 
full measure and entire explanation of that magnifi- 
cent system of atonement which is revealed in the 
death of Christ ; the meaning of which analogy would 
lead us to believe as much to exceed all our human 
conceptions of it as the universe exceeds this little 
globe? 2 

I am far, indeed, from wishing to tear from any 
mind the illustrations which it may find useful in 

1 Knowledge is dependent either on innate forms of thought, 
or on matter suggested through experience. In the former case, 
it is subjective in its character. A revelation must be accommo- 
dated to the powers of the being that is to apprehend it ; else it 
would be unintelligible. 

2 See this line of thought pursued in Sermon V. p. 164. 



192 



THE ATONEMENT. 



SERM. VI* 



explaining to itself the mystery of the atonement. 
As we are unable to form a notion to ourselves of a 
Divine Being, save by conceiving him to have a body, 
or passions, or thoughts like those which belong to 
man 1 ; so perhaps we may be unable to imagine to 
ourselves atonement without the aid of earthly illus- 
trations ; yet we ought to remember that they are, 
at most, probably only types, miniatures, distant 
analogies of a reality which passes man's comprehen- 
sion. We may rest in these now ; hereafter, perhaps, 
in the heavenly world, the mystery of wondrous love 
shall be unfolded to us, not in blind glimpses and 
indistinct types, but eye to eye, by the light of an 
undimmed intuition, when we shall know as we are 
known. 

Must we, however, in the consciousness of the 
comparative imperfection of all our explanations of 
this great atonement, throw away totally the mys- 
tery of it, and regard it, as we have said that many 
now consider it, to be only a great example, preach- 
ing the evil of sin and the dignity of sorrow ? Are 
we to think that it only reconciled man to God, and 
not also God to man ? Are we to suppose that its 
sole object was in reference to man, and that it con- 

1 A growth might be shown in the conception under which 
the idea of God is presented. In the Law, God is regarded as 
having the body of man ; in the Prophets, his passions ; in the 
Gospels, his mind. 



SERM. VI. 



THE ATONEMENT. 



193 



tained no deeper mystery unrepealed to us, in refer- 
ence to God and to the world invisible ? Are we to 
believe that no obstacles stood in the way of our 
salvation except those understood by us ? By no 
means. On the contrary ; though I have endea- 
voured to put you on your guard against supposing 
that the trifling explanations which are often given 
of this mighty mystery really explain it ; though I 
have hinted that any theory of the atonement is 
perhaps impossible, any explanation of that majestic 
mystery almost irreverent ; though I have preferred 
to advise you to rely on Christ's death as a real but 
incomprehensible mode of removing the obstacles, 
which, known or unknown to us 1 , stood in the way 
of our salvation ; yet I wish to caution you very 
solemnly against accepting any suggestions for 
explaining away that atonement by making it merely 
the means of reconciling man to God, and not also 
God to man. The reasons why we cannot admit 
such suggestions shall be stated soon. Previously, 
however, it is necessary to allude more distinctly, 

1 The reasons for assuming that obstacles "unknown" to us 
may have impeded human salvation are: — (1st) because the 
finite mind of man is not a perfect gauge of the infinite God ; 
(2nd) we have seen that no hypothesis, in reference to these 
mysterious obstacles, offers a perfectly satisfactory explanation of 
them; and (3rd) the idea of guilt appears to point to an impedi- 
ment in Deity external to man, and not merely to the subjective 
or internal obstacle of man's distrust of God's mercy. 

O 



194 



THE ATONEMENT. 



SERM. VI. 



even at the risk of repetition, to this modern form of 
the controversy. 

It is the opinion of many conscientious men that 
God was never angry with man, but that man had, 
in consequence of human sin, begun to doubt of God's 
love ; that Christ, therefore, came forth as a messen- 
ger, not to reconcile God to man, but man to God, 
by embodying a visible proof of God's love to us ; 
and if the contrary view seem to be implied in the 
Holy Scripture, they explain it away, either by 
supposing that Providence has permitted phenomena 
to be therein described from the popular point of 
view, just as the alteration in the position of the 
earth is, in popular modes of speaking, attributed to 
a movement in the solar orb ; or else that the 
scripture writers were presenting the idea under the 
J ewish conceptions of sacrifice which had trammelled 
their early education. 1 

What is the answer to such a view? It is evident 
that appeal to the Bible for its refutation is to beg 
at once the question which is in dispute, unless rea- 
sons can be supplied for believing that the doctrine 
of the atonement in the apostolical teaching is not 
one which can have received a tinge from the medium 
of the human minds through which the knowledge 
of it is transmitted. 2 If criticism be fairly allowed 

1 The latter of these two statements was thought to be Mr. 
Jowett's view until his explanation in the new edition of his work. 

2 Were not some of the Sermons, contained in the published 



SERMi VI. 



THE ATONEMENT. 



195 



to subtract from that teaching whatever was local, or 
Jewish, or temporary, what tests can be suggested 
for showing that this hallowed mystery must not be 
thus surrendered ? Such tests must be found in the 
circumstance that the atonement is not a mere be- 
lief of the Apostles' minds, but a fact of their con- 
sciousness; not the product of their logical under- 
standing, but the reality presented to their intuitional 
perception. 1 

As this position will, however, appear to different 
minds to possess different degrees of strength, it is 
better, perhaps, to answer the suggested difficulty 
by some other means than the direct appeal to Scrip- 
ture. The refutation must accordingly be sought in 
philosophy, not in theology. Restricting it to this 
point of view, the question will stand thus : — The class 
of writers who suggest the argument, admit that the 
Scriptures convey the idea of atonement, but level 
against the doctrine the antecedent improbability 
arising from its injustice as contradictory to the 
moral sense. Where is the reply to be found? Is it 
by showing that the moral sense is simply a guide for 
our own conduct, not a measure of God's actions, 

course on the atonement, preached before the University of 
Oxford, in 1856, liable to this very charge of petitio principii? 

1 This distinction will be well understood by those who are 
acquainted with Eeid's " Theory of Perception," or Sir W. Hamil- 
ton's remarks on it. On the application of this test to religion 
and inspiration, see Morell's "Philosophy of Religion " (ch. 2, 5, 6). 

o 2 



196 



THE ATONEMENT. 



SERM. VI. 



merely regulative, not speculative ? 1 I would yield 
all honour to the students who furnish such answers, 
and I feel a delicacy in criticising their teaching on 
the present occasion. Yet may it not be said, without 
impropriety, that those answers would not satisfy 
painful doubts such as those to which allusion has 
been made ? Like all arguments which have the air 
of demonstration, they seem too rigorous and exact 
to be persuasive. They recommend themselves to 

1 This is the line which Mr. Mansel adopts in the seventh 
of his " Bampton Lectures," thus extending the principle of the 
subjective character of the faculties which he adopts from Kant to 
the practical, as well as the speculative reason, which that philoso- 
pher declined to do. Such a view is, if true, a complete answer 
to the difficulties on the atonement ; but would it not destroy 
our capacity to judge of the evidence of a revelation equally 
with its material? However, even if true, it is evident that it 
would be an answer to the opponents on new ground ; the one 
here attempted is on their own ground. 

The remarks which follow in the text are not meant to be dis- 
respectful to Mr. Mansel, a writer who, previous to the publica- 
tion of his " Bampton Lectures," had already placed himself in 
the highest rank of British psychologists, and who has in that 
work brought his knowledge of metaphysical speculation to bear 
on the subject of religion. Those who adopt his views, that the 
proper function of the moral sense is primarily directed to human 
duty, and therefore that its assertions are only presumptively true 
when its sphere is transferred to judge of the Divine attributes 
and government, will regard the line of argument adopted in 
this Sermon to be nothing more than a presumption, drawn from 
the moral sense in favour of Atonement, designed to balance 
the counter presumption derivable from the same source against 
the doctrine, and will not allow to either presumption a specula- 
tive value. 



SERM. VI. 



THE ATONEMENT. 



197 



the believing bystander, but not to the suffering 
sceptic ; they constrain silence, but do not carry 
conviction : ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant. 
A less cogent, but perhaps more persuasive, answer is 
to be found, in establishing such an antecedent pro- 
bability in favour of the idea of atonement as shall 
cancel the antecedent improbability which exists 
against it. 

Whence is such antecedent probability to be 
drawn ? From consciousness and from history ; from 
the consciousness of guilt and from the history of 
sacrifice. If the idea of guilt is universal, if it con- 
tains the ineradicable conception of ill-desert, if it 
oppresses with incredible bitterness even those whose 
lives have been comparatively faultless ; if also his- 
tory shows the prevalence of sacrifice (no matter 
whether its origin be divine or human), 1 as instinc- 
tively suggested by the universal human conscious- 
ness as the means for the removal of guilt, and thus 
witnesses with inextinguishable clearness to the neces- 
sity of mediation 2 ; then I claim that we discover 

1 See Davison on " Sacrifice ;" Magee and Dr. Pye Smith on 
" The Atonement ;" and Thomson's " Bampton Lectures," lect. ii. 
The evidence in favour of the Divine origin of sacrifice is col- 
lected in Mr. Rigg's little work, before named, on "Modern 
Anglican Theology." The human origin of them is stated in 
Professor Jowett's "Essay on the Atonement " (ii. 479, 1st ed.). 

2 Thomson's " Bampton Lectures," lect. ii. A remarkable 
passage on the consciousness of guilt existed in the first edition 
of Adam Smith's " Moral Sentiments," p. 204. It is quoted by 

o 3 



198 



THE ATONEMENT. 



SEEM. VI. 



here, deeply and ineffaceably written in the recesses 
of the human heart, the conceptions which may form 
an antecedent probability in favour of the reality of 
the Scripture view, and which may cancel the ante- 
cedent objections on the other side. If so, we may 
thankfully acquiesce in the ordinary view of the 
Divine atonement, and while declining to accept 
unhesitatingly the trifling explanations which are 
usually offered for simplifying that marvel, we may 
cling to the mystery itself as a great reality. We 
pretend not to explain it, but appealing to the 
strength of instinctive conviction, and relying on 
apostolical teaching and on universal Christian 
consciousness as the perpetual and unanswerable 
proofs of its truth, we can hold fast the blessed doc- 
trine that our Saviour's death was more important 
than His life, and believe that the sufferings of J esus 

Magee, " Atonement," vol. i. p. 205. The value of the argument 
from the idea of guilt in favour of vicarious atonement is a ques- 
tion of ontology, i. e. of that branch of metaphysical science which 
inquires into objective existence as distinct from subjective con- 
sciousness. Of course such a science cannot discover being as 
distinct from our knowledge of being ; it can only seek to detect 
traces in the data of consciousness which seem to point to corre- 
sponding external realities. Assuming from psychology the exist- 
ence of the idea of guilt, and the peculiarities which mark it, how 
far may this idea be regarded as simply indicating our own 
distrust of God, or how far may it be viewed as indicating a 
cause in Him which excites our distrust ? This is the ontological 
problem. The boundaries of the science are stated in Mr.Mansel's 
article on Metaphysics, in the " Encyclopaedia Britannica," eighth 
edition. 



SERM. VI. 



THE ATONEMENT. 



199 



Christ have not merely reconciled man to God by 
i testifying God's love, but have verily reconciled God 
: to man by removing, in some un discoverable manner, 
the obstacles, known or unknown, which prevented 
God from showing mercy to man. And in the light 
of this idea we can understand the interest which is 
taken in the subject in the world invisible; we can 
comprehend why the spirits of departed men, when 
they visited our Lord in that mysterious vision on 
the mountains of Hermon, spoke to Him of the suffer- 
ings which He should accomplish at Jerusalem. 

In conclusion, let us endeavour to enforce on our 
consciences some lessons to be carried to our homes, 
and to embody in our lives. 

If the sufferings of Christ be as important as we 
have represented them to be, we should ask ourselves 
whether we realise their importance in idea, and 
whether we attempt to live upon them in act. Each 
one's own conscience will tell him frankly the real 
state of his heart in this matter. During the past 
week how often, or how seldom, have you turned 
in thought to the Redeemer's sufferings? The angels 
desire to look into these things 1 ; departed spirits can 
travel back to earth and speak of them ; and when, in 
mystic vision 2 , the veil which shuts out the invisible 
was lifted to the loved disciple, an exiled confessor, in 



1 1 Pet. i. 12. 2 Rev. v. 

o 4 



200 



THE ATONEMENT. 



SERM. VI. 



the lonely rock of Patinos, and a glimpse, as it were, 
was afforded him of the heavenly world, he saw 
Jesus standing before the throne "as a lamb newly 
slain," while the choir of angelic spirits was shout- 
ing the praises, " Worthy the Lamb that was slain," 
and the voices of ten thousand times ten thousand 
of the spirits of redeemed men were uttering, louder 
than the sound of mighty waters, in adoring grati- 
tude ; — " Thou art worthy, for thou wast slain, and 
hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every 
kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation." Does 
this subject interest heaven, and yet engages not 
our affections? Do we, in the hurry of our daily 
life, fretted with its anxieties, heated with its amuse- 
ments, whirled away in its vanities, neglect to 
meditate on the sufferings of Christ? When we 
bow in prayer at morning or at evening, or kneel 
to receive the blessed Sacrament, do we fail to feel 
the value of those atoning sufferings as our only plea, 
and to cast ourselves on their merit for pardon, and 
holiness, and preparation for Heaven. Let us cling 
now in our daily life to that atonement, in the agony 
of earnest prayer, if we would wish to cling to 
it in the hour of death, when no other support 
is nigh. 

And let us never forget that the souls of each 
one of us are dear to the Saviour. He has tasted 
death for every man. Though absent, He sees us 



SERM. VI. 



THE ATONEMENT. 



201 



and hears our prayer. Nay, in that absence He is 
mingling our prayers with the incense of His inter- 
cession, and carrying on the work of our salvation. 
You might have thought that when He was absent 
from the disciples on the lonely mountain top, He 
was not concerning Himself with their needs; yet 
in that very transaction He was engaged in a myste- 
rious work connected with their salvation. This 
idea seems to have struck to such a degree the mind 
of that great artist whose grand picture of the 
Transfiguration, the noblest work in a noble gallery, 
formed the closing monument of his wondrous, but, 
alas ! too short career, that he has actually violated 
the laws of perspective in depicting the scene. In 
the foreground of his picture he represents the ago- 
nised relatives of an afflicted youth imploring in 
vain the aid of the disciples, one of whom points 
to Christ as the only source* of true aid. In the 
higher part of the picture is seen the mount of the 
transfiguration, and Jesus glorified before his dis- 
ciples. And instead of representing the figure of 
our Saviour foreshortened, as it ought to have been 
when seen from below, he has depicted it in its 
full length, as if seen from the same level and close 
at hand. 1 Why was this? Was it not, think you, 
that the imagination of the artist, filled with that 

1 Kugler's " Handbook of Italian Painting, by Eastlake," b. v. 
eh. iy. p. 384. 



202 



THE ATONEMENT. 



SEKM. VI. 



poetry, with that truthfulness, which appertain to 
real genius, wished to imply, that the Saviour, far 
off on yon mountain top, to whom, as the only source 
of aid, the disciple was pointing, was indeed not really 
distant, but in truth very nigh ? If he meant this, 
he conceived the truth. For in very deed Jesus, 
though far off, is very nigh to all that seek Him. 
Though gone on high, He is interesting himself in 
human salvation. He now sees each one of us, and 
is nigh to us. He loves each one of us as he loved 
His disciples of old; He as much pities each one of 
us as He pitied the tortured beings whom He healed 
on earth ; He as much hears and answers the secret 
longing, the unuttered breathing of our inmost 
souls, as He heard and answered the suppliants who 
used to petition Him face to face. 

Ought we not then to flee our sins, to lay aside 
our half-heartedness, to yield to Him the hallowed 
service of a persistent will, to grieve that any portion 
of our hearts and our affections should be uncon- 
secrated to Him? In the habitual practice of private 
prayer, in drawing nigh to His mystic sacraments, 
let us realise our interest in His sufferings; let us 
implore of Him pardon, holiness, heaven, and He 
will throw His everlasting arms around us while 
living, and put His hand under our pillow while 
suffering, and receive our souls into His bosom while 
dying. " By thine agony and bloody sweat, by thy 
cross and passion, good Lord deliver us/' 



SERMON VII. 

LAWS IN THE LIFE SPIRITUAL. 

(Preached before the University on St. Paul's Day, Jan. 25th, 1858.) 

♦ 

2 Timothy iv. 7. 

I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, 
I have kept the faith. 

There are three aspects of human life : the life 
practical, the life intellectual, and the life mystical. 
The life practical is the lowest form of life which 
is strictly human, the lowest, that is, which is raised 
above the mere susceptibilities of sense. It may co- 
exist with the higher lives, or it may be in great 
degree isolated from them. The life intellectual 
is a further advance. It no longer illustrates what 
a man does, but what he is. Its seat is in the 
thinking mind, as the seat of the practical life is in 
the active powers and conscience. There is yet 
a still higher life in man: the life mystical or 
religious; those susceptibilities, emotional and intel- 



204 



LAWS IN LIFE SPIRITUAL. 



SERM. VII. 



lectual, which men experience towards the infinite, 
towards the unseen source of power and goodness. 
This form of life may perhaps be located in the 
exercise of a special religious feeling and in the 
intuition. 1 

These three forms of life, inasmuch as they exist 
as a general phenomenon, may be noticed in cha- 
racters of every age and of every religion. They are 
facts of human nature, irrespective of the objects 
towards which they may be directed, and the prin- 
ciples under which they may be conducted. Accord- 
ingly their existence may be traced also in those 
persons who have embraced the Christian religion, 
and regulated their lives by its ideas and motives ; 
indeed, it is in them that their highest and purest 
form may be studied. Though the life of every 
Christian must to some extent show the combination 
of all three lives, yet it is quite possible to select 
instances which shall form marked examples, more 

1 Compare Morell's "Philosophy of Religion," ch. ii. The 
following Sermon, in some degree, assumes that the religious life 
is not merely moral life elevated in its motives, and transferred 
to new objects, but that it depends upon a special form of emo- 
tion, which co-operates with a special form of intuition. The 
difference between this view and that of Schleiermacher would be 
mainly that he would regard the discovery of the laws of this life 
to be impossible. While it must be conceded that the discovery 
of laws in these faculties is really impossible if sought by the 
method of psychological analysis, a new mode for their discovery 
is suggested in this Sermon in the application of induction to the 
experiences of religious men. 



seem. vii. LAWS IN LIFE SPIRITUAL. 205 

especially of some one of the three. Thus most 
persons who look at the characters of the Apostles 
of our Lord, as exhibited alike in history and in 
their written remains, would select St. James as 
the example of the Apostle who, in his exposition 
of Christianity, laid most emphasis on the life practi- 
cal; St. Paul, on the life intellectual, and St. John, 
on the life mystical. 1 And in a first view, and as 
a hasty generalisation, there is much truth in such 
a statement. Broad views of this kind have their 
value in suggesting or directing investigation. Yet 
if we look more narrowly into details, we shall find 
that no one of these three Apostles presented these 
three lives in isolation. It is impossible, on the 
present occasion, to digress to prove this assertion 
of St. James and St. John; but it will be very 
apparent in the case of St. Paul, if we turn our 
thoughts in the most cursory manner to his writings. 
If he presents to us in the Galatians and the Romans 
more approach to a dogmatic view of theology than 
is to be found in any other inspired work; yet in 
the Epistles of his imprisonment, those written to 
Ephesus, and Philippi, and Colosse, we have the 
secret, inexplicable workings of the spiritual mysti- 
cal life alluded to, so far as language can express 
them. " He hath blessed us with all spiritual bless- 

1 Compare this view given with proper limitations in the Rev. 
A. P. Stanley's very instructive " Sermons on the Apostolical 
Age.' 5 



206 



LAWS IN LIFE SPIRITUAL. 



serm. vir. 



ings in heavenly places in Christ." " Ye were 
sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise." " Your 
life is hid with Christ in God." " That He would 
grant you according to the riches of His glory, to 
be strengthened with might by His spirit in the 
inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts 
by faith, that ye being rooted and grounded in love, 
may be able to comprehend with all saints what 
is the breadth and length, and depth and height, and 
to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, 
that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God." 1 
It is unnecessary to multiply passages, but we may 
ask, could any language, even of St. John, exceed 
such words as these, in expressing the depth of that 
spiritual inner religious life which St. Paul possessed, 
and of which he longed that others should partake? 
Nor is it necessary to detain you to prove, as might 
easily be done, that not only may the life mystical 
be found in the writings of this great Apostle as 
clearly as in those of St. John, but that also he 
strives to impress on his hearers the life of Christian 
action as flowing from Christian principle, with an 
earnestness not inferior even to the stern vigour of 
the Apostle James. The chapter on charity, in his 
first Epistle to Corinth, utters, as it were, the lan- 
guage of St. James with perhaps more than James's 



1 Eph. ii. 6 ; Eph. i. 13 ; Col. iii. 3 ; Eph. iii. 16—19. 



serm. vii. LAWS 1ST LIFE SPIRITUAL. 



207 



acuteness ; and the language of St. John with more 
than John's pathos. 

Indeed St. Paul may be adduced as an instance 
of an individual in whose life and teaching these 
three lives were very harmoniously balanced. Look- 
ing at his character as a whole, in no other Apostle 
can we find a model in which we can so suitably 
study the three in their combination in a Christian 
character. And perhaps it is this very circumstance 
which in part has largely contributed to make his 
influence so much more lasting and potent than that 
of his brother Apostles, and so operative religiously 
on other ages than his own. For it is observable 
that, be the cause what it may, the fact is real that 
the Apostle Paul may be measured against the first 
characters in history as regards the width and the 
permanence of his influence. It might seem a start- 
ling assertion, and yet it would bear investigation, 
if we were to assert to you that the single individual 
in all time whom we must select as having exercised 
the greatest influence on the world and left the 
impression of his character on succeeding ages, is 
the Apostle Paul. If you should be at first in- 
clined to award that proud position to some mighty 
conqueror, you must check yourself by the thought 
that the conquest has swept past like the whirlwind, 
and seldom left in the foundations of an improved 
civilisation the permanent happiness which is the 



208 



LAWS IN LIFE SPIRITUAL. 



SERM. VII. 



only compensation for the infliction of temporary 
misery; or if you should incline to crown with that 
highest honour some philosopher who has opened 
up new worlds of thought, and enlarged immeasur- 
ably the methods of knowledge, you must modify 
your decision by the reflection that such a labour, 
noble and enduring though it be, yields to the 
Apostle's work in importance, as the concerns of time 
yield to those of eternity. It was the Apostle who 
Avas the first to evangelise Europe. It was he who 
saved the Christian faith from corruption when 
even St. Peter himself was giving way to the per- 
tinacity of the Jews. It was he who expounded the 
Christian doctrines in those Epistles which must 
remain the most valuable monuments of Christian 
literature to the end of time. And when we esti- 
mate his intellectual influence, not to take account 
of the many to whom he was personally known, we 
shall yet find that the noblest thinkers in Chris- 
tendom have owed to the study of his writings those 
discoveries which have endeared their names. Those 1 
who from time to time rescued from oblivion neg- 
lected truths, trained themselves by devout prayer 
in the study of the Apostle's writings; and if in 
the dark night, which in the middle ages spread its 
veil over the ancient civilisation, there were stars 

1 Chrysostoni, Augustin, Anselm, Aquinas. 



seem. vir. LAWS IN LIFE SPIRITUAL. 209 

showing to the pilgrim steadier and clearer light 
than the other luminaries of the heavens, the cause 
was that they reflected some rays of the Divine 
glory which had been concentrated in the sundike 
brightness of the Apostle's inspiration. And at a 
later period, when the darkness of that night was 
disappearing before the cheering rays of the day 
of modern illumination, it was the study of St. 
Paul's writings which gave the best of the reformers 
those views and that courage which enabled them 
to break up the intellectual and religious servitude 
of the middle ages, and to tear away the additions 
which had been made to Christianity in the progress 
of sixteen centuries. 

Further, St. Paul's example has stimulated effort 
as his writings have excited thought. For the 
Apostle stands at an illimitable distance above the 
most marked instances of pertinacious and heroic 
self-sacrifice. His whole heart was set, his whole 
life was given, to alleviate human misery, to carry 
the balm of sorrow to that creation which was groan- 
ing for it. Year after year he pursued his purpose, 
meeting no reward but the perpetual reward of con- 
scious duty, and finding at length nothing but soli- 
tude, imprisonment, and martyrdom. Accordingly, 
his missionary spirit has formed the example, and 
has stirred the emulation, of Christendom in all 
moments when men have awoke to the necessity of 

p 



210 



LAWS IN LIFE SPIRITUAL. serm. vii. 



missionary effort. How great then has been the 
influence of St. Paul! It was he that moulded 
Christianity, it was he that dispersed it over Europe, 
it was his thoughts that have aroused speculation 
and reawakened missionary effort. Judge then 
whether we are altogether wrong in claiming for 
him one of the most influential positions in history. 

It is not, however, to St. Paul's life of labour, 
nor to his mental character and dogmatic views, — 
not to his life practical or intellectual, — that I desire, 
on the present occasion, to direct your further 
attention. Eather I wish us to study his life as 
an embodiment of the life spiritual or mystical. 
Can we so read his life as to comprehend the growth 
of personal holiness in his character? Can we dis- 
entangle that which is common to all Christians 
from that which is peculiar to him in his capacity 
of an Apostle? Does he in his writings offer such 
explanation and interpretation of the feelings and 
facts of religious living as to give us the means 
of constructing an account of the growth of the 
life spiritual? To put the subject still more gene- 
rally, I wish to consider the theory of the religious 
life, whether it is subject to laws; if so, whether 
we can discover them ; and in that case, what the 
method is of such inquiry, and what the chief results 
to which it conducts us. 

I. When we ask whether the religious life is sub- 



serm. vii. LAWS IN LIFE SPIRITUAL. 211 

ject to laws, the answer is so natural that the analogy 
of the whole of God's government, both moral and 
material, would suggest the presumption that the 
spiritual also must be directed according to a system 
of laws, either discoverable or inscrutable, that it 
might excite surprise why we should think it neces- 
sary to ask the question. Yet in reality, when we 
look to the history of theological opinion, we find two 
such very different answers given to this inquiry, 
that it becomes important to bestow a moment's 
thought upon it. There have been Christian thinkers 
who have said that the whole of the life spiritual 
is subject to merely moral laws, and have resolved 
the Christian life into the ordinary processes un- 
folded by moral psychology. This view is not 
common in the present age ; the whole tone of 
thought, philosophical as well as religious, has 
become averse to it ; but in the last century it 
was quite a prevalent one. Not merely critical 
historians, like Gibbon, who, writing from an ex- 
ternal point of view, would naturally resolve Chris- 
tian goodness into ordinary principles of moral 
causation; but even defenders of the faith, like 
Bishop Butler (we may perhaps venture to suggest), 
very nearly adopt the same view. What is morality, 
according to that eminent writer, but the restoration 
of a disturbed psychological constitution ? and what 
does Christianity give us but new motives and new 

p 2 



212 



LAWS IN LIFE SPIRITUAL. 



SEEM. VII. 



means towards effecting such a restoration ? There 
is no distinct recognition of a life deeper, more 
hidden, kindled by the direct operation of God's 
Spirit in man's heart ; a life consisting not merely 
in the restoration of a disarranged constitution, but 
in an actual union of the human spirit with the 
divine. 1 It is possible that such an omission may 
have arisen from the controversial character of the 
Bishop's writings. He wished to show the reason- 
ableness of religion, and therefore was compelled to 
show its naturalness. Yet the very fact that he 
adopted such a merely negative view in order to 
recommend his position, may be adduced as a proof 
of the prevalence in his day of such a mode of 
viewing the question. And if it be not true of a 
majestic mind like that of the Bishop, it is at least 
true of many of the inferior Christian writers of that 
age, that they evince no perception of the distinctness 
between merely moral life, heightened and purified 

1 Bishop Butler's views on this subject are to be collected from 
his 2nd and 3rd Sermon ; also from the 13th and 14th, on the Love 
of God ; and from part ii. ch. i. of the " Analogy." In the first 
of these references, he shows that morality is the restoration of a 
disturbed equilibrium ; in the second, that the love of God is the 
tendency, or final cause of the various emotions, if transferred to 
their highest object ; in the third, he represents Revealed Religion 
as a republication of Natural Religion, together with new in- 
formation, in reference to certain facts ; which, however, are 
specially influential on men, through furnishing new motives and 
new means for religious improvement. 



seem. vii. LAWS IN LIFE SPIRITUAL. 



213 



in its aims, and the deeper secret mystical life which 
Christians may possess. Among writers of this class 
religious changes are regarded as explicable entirely 
by natural laws. Circumstances or impressions acting 
upon us affect the feelings ; the feelings form the 
resolutions ; the resolutions produce the acts ; and a 
course of action^ connected and reinforced from time 
to time by the revival of the original impression 
through means of the law of mental association, pro- 
duces at length habits, an habitual course of reli- 
gious goodness. Such is one answer to the question 
whether the religious life obeys laws. It obeys them 
simply because it does not transcend ordinary moral 
life in itself, only in its motives and tendencies. 

There is another view, however, in its character the 
very opposite, yet which is almost equally erroneous. 
It is, that the religious life is a thing so mysterious, 
so regulated by processes incomprehensible to us, 
that it exists without our being conscious of it ; that 
it is a thing which we cannot express in words, can- 
not think of in thoughts • that it is known to God, 
unknown to man ; not detectable in ourselves or in 
others. This view has been held, in whole or in part, 
by many persons of different schools. It is one of the 
greatest of the many defects in the theology created 
by the Genevese reformer, Calvin. His teaching 
has led his followers to insist that the divine life is 
something depending on God's election, and not on 

p 3 



214 



LAWS IN LIFE SPIRITUAL. serm. vii. 



man's freedom; that its implantation in man is a 
mystery ; that it still exists within a man, not only 
when he is not conscious of it, but even — (extravagant 
and inferior minds have implied this) — when he falls 
into actual sin. Nor is it merely among the Cal- 
vinistic Protestants that this doctrine appears. It 
arises also from the sacramental theory of the Church 
of Kome. Wherever a writer is found representing 
that a seed of grace has been implanted, opere operate, 
in the sacrament of baptism, which continues to exist 
in a man, unextinguished through years of actual sin, 
we have here under another form the same idea — viz. 
that the life spiritual is something disconnected from 
fact, disconnected from consciousness, disobedient 
to the law that religion must exclude sin ; we meet 
here again, under another form, the notion which 
we have just been combating in the theology of 
Calvin. Yet again the same idea is found not 
only in Calvinism and in the Catholic theology, but 
also in those Mystics who from time to time assert 
the existence in man (as they are pleased to term 
them) of faculties transcending consciousness. In 
our own age, through reaction against the cold, 
critical materialism of the last century, such a view 
has begun to gain ground largely. The name of 
Schleiermacher 1 will occur as the most notorious 

1 On Schleiermacher's Mysticism, see Vaughan's " Hours with 
the Mystics," book xiii. 



seem. vn. LAWS IN LIFE SPIRITUAL. 



215 



recent instance of the application of such views to 
orthodox theology. According to this theory there 
is a certain faculty in men, an intuition, which rises 
above all sensible objects, and penetrates into their 
very essence. It sees the Infinite, the Absolute, not 
under the ordinary limitations which sense and 
thought put upon the idea ; but, transcending all 
such bounds, it scans the universe of being, it mounts 
to the throne of the Eternal, and sees by a super- 
natural intuition absolute truth, absolute goodness, 
absolute beauty. The life spiritual is connected 
with such a power. In one sense this identification 
may be regarded as making it amenable to laws ; but 
in another the idea of law is thrown aside in the con- 
templation of it. For law is a term applicable to 
subordinate forms of existence and of knowledge ; 
but inapplicable to a form of existence and of cog- 
nition which transcends the bounds of ordinary con- 
scious criticism. 

We have thus presented in opposition the two 
views of the life spiritual ; one which would make it 
simply natural, the other simply supernatural. And 
may we not say that there is a grain of truth in both 
views ? Spiritual knowledge is verily an appercep- 
tion of truth which is not cognisable by ordinary 
faculties ; and spiritual life is a form of existence 
transcending even the highest moral life. Not all 
truth is to be reduced to that which is amenable to 

p 4 



216 LAWS IN LIFE SPIRITUAL. seem. vii. 

critical investigation. There is a world of life and 
of thought of which we detect the traces but cannot 
understand the nature. And thus far accordingly 
the spiritual life, be it regarded as intellectual or 
emotional, is supernatural ; but we must be careful, 
on the other hand, not to disconnect the spiritual life 
from the human mind, nor to isolate it entirely from 
the ordinary facts of mental and emotional science. 
And it is in this respect that Bishop Butler's ser- 
mons will always have such immense value. There 
may possibly be in them that slight defect of an absence 
of any direct recognition of the life spiritual, to which 
I before alluded ; but with this exception, we cannot 
study too closely the method in which he shows that 
even the deepest feelings, such as the love of God, 
are compatible with human nature. 1 It was the 
dispute which had been opened up in France, shortly 
before his own time, by the mysticism called 
Quietism 2 , which led him to see that such a recon- 
ciliation of the supernatural and natural was pos- 
sible ; and who among us does not feel what a reality 
it would give to many a discourse on spiritual 
subjects in the present day if the minds of preachers 
were imbued with the common sense, with the science, 
of the Bishop's writings ? 

1 See Butler's " Sermons," xiii. and xiv. 

2 On the history of " Quietism," see Vaughan's " Hours with 
the Mystics," book x. 



serm. vii. LAWS IN LIFE SPIRITUAL. 



217 



II. In answering the first question, whether the 
spiritual life is subject to laws, we have almost 
anticipated the answer to the second, whether its 
laws are discoverable by man. The answer which 
we wish to give is, that the mode of its operation 
may be understood, though its nature cannot. Su- 
pernatural in itself, it is natural in the method of 
its manifestation ; mysterious in its origin, it is yet 
linked with fact and joined with psychological pro- 
cesses and mental laws. Under this aspect its 
nature will be similar to other forms of life known 
' to us. In all such forms, whether the life organic 
or the life rational, there is a power and principle 
hidden, to which we never penetrate, but there are 
effects under which this mysterious principle mani- 
fests itself, of which we can write the natural history. 
. We cannot go back to the first dawn of physical life ; 
but beginning with its earliest manifestation in the 
germ cell, we can trace its manifestations onward 
through the various stages of embryonic and adult 
life to its dissolution. We can mark its features, 
see the action and reaction of the outer world upon 
it, collect its phenomena, evolve its laws, and occa- 
sionally generalise them into their causes. Similarly 
with the life intellectual, whether studied in the 
individual mind or in the history of the growth of 
civilisation, we can mark its power, and write its 
history. Yet there is a residuum of mystery to which 



218 



LAWS IN LIFE SPIRITUAL. 



serm. vir. 



we cannot penetrate. And thus with the life spiri- 
tual ; we can watch its growth, see what circumstances 
promote its vigour, what influences tend to blight 
it. We cannot know its essence ; but we can write 
a practical history of its manifestations, and form an 
approximately accurate theory of its laws of ope- 
ration. 

If this be the case, what is the method for the dis- 
covery of those special laws ? — for we have already 
seen that they are different from even the laws of 
the highest form of life, which is possible in the 
mere feelings when actuated by ordinary moral 
motives. 

III. The method to be adopted for their discovery 
must be to collect them inductively from the expe- 
rience of religious men. There are two sources 
wherein we may see such experience registered : one 
is in the lives and thoughts of saints in the Bible ; 
the other is in religious memoirs, — in other words, 
in inspired and uninspired religious biography. Facts 
such as those which relate to the spiritual life must 
be learned by consciousness alone. When we are 
prosecuting our researches into physical subjects, we 
can adopt the methods of observation and experiment 
as means of analysing the facts from which we are 
striving to gather the inferences. But when we pass 
to mental phenomena these methods diminish in 
value ; we can no longer appeal to the senses, and 



SERM. VII. 



LAWS IN LIFE SPIRITUAL. 



219 



we are compelled accordingly to resort to the method 
of observation of internal phenomena which is offered 
through consciousness. 1 And you should notice that 
we not only trust the assertions of such consciousness 
when it is capable of being verified in our own expe- 
rience, but we trust it also when it rests on the state- 
ments of other persons, — when it attests the mental 
and emotional phenomena of which other persons are 
conscious even when unfelt by ourselves, provided 
only we use proper tests to check its inaccuracy. It 
is by a method exactly similar to this, and by evidence 
similar to this, that we learn the facts which relate 
to the life spiritual. We must trust, even where we 
have not ourselves verified them by personal experi- 
ence of the like feelings, the assertions of other religious 
persons, on the facts of their own religious conscious- 
ness. Thus, for example, the question has often been 
raised, whether spiritual conversions are sudden or 
gradual. You must settle a question like this simply 
by consulting biography. There you find instances 
of both, — many instances like that noted one in the 

1 The methods of analysing facts are usually stated to be 
three, viz. observation, experiment, and comparison ; the last of 
which is meant to express the extended study of analogies or 
affinities, which is possible in botanical and zoological science. 
On the two former methods, see Mill's " Logic," vol. i. b. iii. 
ch. 7. To these methods must be added a fourth, viz. the exami- 
nation of psychological phenomena through the internal observa- 
tion called consciousness. This is the one to which allusion is 
made in the text. 



220 



LAWS IN LIFE SPIRITUAL. 



SERM. VII. 



last century, of # Col. Gardiner 1 , of most sudden and 
unexpected religious conviction ; — many, again, 
where a good man knows not the day nor the hour of 
his religious change, but is only able to express his 
experience, when looking back to his former life of 
irreligion, in the words, " I know that whereas I was 
blind, now I see." 

If we thus build our history of the laws which re- 
gulate and of the facts which accompany religious 
living on the consciousness of good men, what tests 
can we use to prevent the imposture of enthusiasm, 
the weakness of self-deception, the cant of fanaticism ? 
I answer, tests similar to those which we should use 
in subtle facts of mental science. Thus the degree 
of evidence in favour of a spiritual fact would be 
heightened, (1) if the supposed spiritual fact be at- 
tested by the consciousness of many, and not merely 
of one ; or (2) if it be remembered by them at a 
later period of life in a cooler moment, and be viewed 
by them exactly in the same way as when at first 
narrated by them ; or (3) if bystanders can testify 
that when the fact was first asserted to exist, the 
persons who were conscious of it were at that time 
in a cool rational state of mind ; or (4) if, again, 
the fact of internal consciousness connects itself with 

1 See Doddridge's " Life of the Hon. Col. J. Gardiner," ch. ii. 



SERM. VII. 



LAWS m LIFE SPIRITUAL. 



221 



other facts patent to all men. 1 Try, for example, the 
conversion of St. Paul by these tests. It is very evi- 
dent that a miraculous conversion like St. Paul's could 
not admit of the first test, viz., that of comparison with 
the consciousness of other persons ; but it admits of 
the rest. For it was always remembered by him, 
and in the main facts narrated always in the same 
manner (I speak, of course, here not mainly of the 
outward circumstances of the heavenly vision, in the 
narrative of which there are unimportant discrepan- 
cies, but of the internal conviction wrought in him of 
the truth of Christianity and of his own duty to 
Christ). Again, to apply the third test : he was in 
the situation least likely to have been affected by 
such a change, unless it were real ; and, lastly, this 
internal belief of his own, that he was then touched 
by the Divine Spirit, connects itself with fact ; for 
from that moment he began to preach, at great risks, 
the faith which he had previously persecuted. 

There is yet one other test applicable to religious 
uninspired consciousnesses, viz. that of comparison 
with the facts of spiritual experience stated in the 
writings of the New Testament, and to some extent 
also in the older Scriptures, as in the Psalms and 
Prophets, 2 

1 Some of these tests are borrowed from a note in Professor 
Jowett's work on " St. Paul," vol. i. p. 232 (first edition). 

2 It will be observed that the view here taken of the Epistles 



222 



LAWS IN LIFE SPIRITUAL. 



If these remarks are correct, as showing the 
manner in which we can give the certainty of science 
to facts of religious experience, then we may draw 
from them an obvious inference, viz., that such facts 
may be used as a branch of the Christian Evidences. 
We are accustomed to regard this branch of the in- 
ternal evidences derivable from personal conscious- 
ness to be a valid reason of belief in Christianity to 
the man who has them, but not a valid reason to be 
rendered to other persons, who have them not. But 
if such phenomena can with probability be shown to 
be facts, then in proportion as they cannot be ex- 
plained by natural agency, they may be used as a 
direct proof of the interference of Heaven. Thus, for 
example, a religious conversion, if traces can be 
shown in it, after all allowance has been made for 

is that they were not intended to communicate summaries of 
Christian doctrines, nor to be the sole standard of theological 
appeal ; for they were written to persons already acquainted with 
Christianity, and instructed in the religious life by their ordinary 
pastors, and possessing in their own religious ideas the education 
necessary to explain the meaning of the Epistles. Hence the 
Apostle's writings were chiefly on special points, or special faults, 
or particular duties, and omit that kind of esoteric or detailed 
instruction which would be supplied to the churches by their 
ordinary ministers. It follows that, though all teaching which is 
contrary to that of the Apostles is necessarily false, yet that some 
truths may be held which they have omitted to name in their 
letters. They must be truths, however, which still receive their 
attestation from the internal consciousness of Christian men, and 
not dogmas, which merely rest on tradition or on history. 



SERM. VII. 



LAWS IN LIFE SPIRITUAL. 



223 



natural influences, of what appears to be Divine 
help, becomes immediately a moral miracle ; and it 
might become a question whether the existence of 
such moral miracles, perpetuated in the Church in 
all ages, might not be made of similar value as an 
argument in favour of the supernatural truth of our 
religion, as the physical miracles which existed in the 
early Church. 

IV. Having now seen what is the method by 
which we may collect the facts and learn the laws of 
the life spiritual, we have finally to ask whether the 
life of the Apostle Paul, as recorded in St. Luke's 
history, or as it peeps forth in his own letters, can be 
regarded as an instance in which we may see an 
embodiment of those facts and laws. It is so very 
obvious that it admits of being thus regarded, and 
most profitably also, that it is only necessary briefly 
to indicate some very few of the points which might 
be gathered from it. 

1. First, what facts of religious experience for all 
time may be learned from the Apostle's conversion? 
In order to answer this we must disentangle in 
that event the element which is peculiar to the Apostle 
from that which may be experienced by all Chris- 
tians. His conversion appears to contain in itself 
three distinct circumstances : first, the miraculous 
manifestation ; secondly, the sudden transition from 
Judaism to Christianity ; and thirdly, the religious 



224 



LAWS IN LIFE SPIRITUAL. 



SERM. VII. 



change from lower and mistaken views of duty to a 
clear perception and possession of that higher life of 
duty and enjoyment, the way towards the attainment 
of which Christ had opened up through his death. 
Of these three circumstances the last only is applicable 
as a fact of general religious history ; the second 
was necessarily restricted to the early Christians. 
There was a time when, to use St. Paul's expres- 
sion, they 44 first believed when they first, that is, 
abandoned heathenism or Judaism and accepted 
Christianity. Such a transition accordingly is of 
course impossible in countries where persons are 
educated as Christians. The first of the three cir- 
cumstances, the miraculous manifestation, was peculiar 
to the Apostle. It seemed as if, among the disciples 
of our Lord, there was not one to do the work for 
which Saul of Tarsus was fitted. It seemed that 
Christianity could not go on without Saul, and 
therefore in that one case, and in that one only, the 
Saviour condescended to look down from His throne, 
and order a miracle, to summon an enemy to be His 
Apostle. 44 He is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear 
my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the 
children of Israel." 1 Yet when we have disentangled 
from St. Paul's conversion the miraculous ingredient, 
unique in his case, and the features which it shared 



Acts ix, 15, 



serm. vii. LAWS IN LIFE SPIRITUAL. 



225 



with those of the early Christians, there still remains 
in it a lesson for all time, in that change which 
passed over him and transformed him (we cannot 
indeed say from sin to holiness, for he was acting on 
views of duty even previously, but) from the lower 
religious consciousness wherein he was acting wrongly, 
though doing it ignorantly in unbelief, to that higher 
religious consciousness wherein he served God as a 
son and Christ as a disciple. Now a change like this 
is, as we find from fact, one which must pass over 
all men, over baptized as well as unbaptized persons. 
Whatever may have been the benefits given under 
the merciful covenant of Infant Baptism (and God 
forbid that I should depreciate them), yet a time 
must come in human life when a man wakens up to 
a sense of his deep guilt, if he have been guilty of 
wilful sin, and his deep sinfulness and imperfection 
if even he have lived correctly. He feels that some 
change must pass over him before his conscience is at 
peace, some forgiveness be vouchsafed to him before 
he dare meet his God in judgment, some holiness be 
imparted to him before he dare hope for heaven. 
Such feelings and such a state of mind which, when 
transient, we call "contrition," or "religious im- 
pressions," and, when leading to permanent amend- 
ment, " religious conversion," may be, nay, must be, 
considered to have been contained, besides and in 
addition to all miraculous circumstances, in the con- 

Q 



226 



LAWS IN LIFE SPIRITUAL. serm. vii. 



version of St. Paul. We have indeed in his own 
Epistle to the Eomans a clear description of this 
state of mind. The seventh chapter, where he 
describes a man wishing what is right but not having 
power to perform it, and crying out, " wretched 
man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body 
of this death ! " alludes to the state of a mind wakening 
to this struggle, — an incipient Christian. The eighth 
chapter, where he describes the joy and privileges 
of a pardoned soul, alludes to that which ought to be 
the ordinary state of Christian men. 

2. This brings into view a second fact or law of 
the life spiritual, which may be gathered from St. 
Paul's statements about himself in his own writings. 
We not only find that he was changed by God's 
Spirit into a higher consciousness of duty, but it 
must also not escape notice that he always speaks of 
his own religious state, and implies it in relation to 
other Christians, with an ecstatic joy, with a con- 
fidence and a happiness, which are not possessed by 
many Christians now. " We joy in God," he says, 
" through our Lord Jesus Christ." " Being justified 
by faith, we have peace with God." "The Spirit 
itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the 
children of God." 1 Here St. Paul speaks not merely 
of himself but of Christian privileges generally, and 

1 Rom. v. 11 ; Rom. v. 1 ; viii. 16. 



seem, vir, LAWS IN LIFE SPIRITUAL. 227 

here accordingly is one of the cases wherein we may 
most fairly call in as evidence that appeal which I 
before explained, to the consciousness of Christian 
men. And if you consult the biographies of holy 
men you find that a time of their lives came when 
they were no longer left to infer from simple 
reasoning the pardon which they had received, but 
felt sure of it by an inexplicable peace of mind, 
by a direct intuition, by a consciousness of access to 
God in their prayers, to which they were before 
strangers, by an earnestness and warmth of the 
religious affections toward God and toward man, 
previously unknown to them. This is as plain a fact 
as any can be which is attested by the consciousness 
of religious men, as expressed in their memoirs and 
private writings. Along with this fact is the further 
one, that such a state of joy, and of love, and of 
holiness, was not given to them by God's election, or 
by some unknown mysterious process, but was simply 
asked and simply obtained by that one method of 
earnest prayer which is as sure and direct a means 
of obtaining spiritual blessings as any cause in 
nature is of producing its appropriate effects. Facts 
like these of religious consciousness explain the 
statements of the Apostle about his own joy, and 
peace, and love. And what may we infer from them ? 
Not perhaps that we must disquiet the minds of 
those who do not possess such feelings, for their 

q 2 



228 



LAWS IN LIFE SPIRITUAL. 



SEEM. VII. 



simple business is to be earnest in their religious 
duties, such as prayer and the holy communion, and 
to leave with God the result ; but that we should 
represent such a state as attainable, that we should 
strive after it ourselves in prayer and in the blessed 
sacrament, and should proclaim it to others, for oh ! 
let not our minds be haunted with that most fatal 
notion that God's spiritual gifts are capricious and 
various. The variation between one man and another 
depends mostly upon ourselves, not upon God. God 
has placed, if we may so say, His Divine Spirit within 
human power by making the gift of it conditional 
on, and proportionate to, man's prayers. 

3, These illustrations might be immeasurably ex- 
tended of the kind of use which we might make of 
the religious consciousness of St. Paul in discovering 
the facts of spiritual experience, the laws of the life 
mystical. But it is time to close, and we may fitly 
accordingly turn our thoughts to that last fact of 
spiritual history taught us in his life, viz. that a 
life of Christian duty, of Christian piety and privilege, 
conducts to a death of calm and triumphant hope. 
If men will take care of their lives, God will not be 
unmindful of them in their deaths. 

There is something singularly affecting in the 
thought of the Apostle in the solitude of his last 
days. At the moment when one would have thought 
that the Christians of Rome would have counted 



seem. vii. LAWS IN LIFE SPIRITUAL. 229 



it their greatest privilege to be admitted to familiar 
intercourse with him, when converse with his mind 
so rich in knowledge, so mighty in experience, must 
have been like intercourse with an ambassador from 
within the veil, — he was abandoned by them all. 
Paul the aged — worn out with his missionary labours 
— deserted in his hour of trouble — abandoned in 
his captivity, with no one to minister to him — left 
without a friend as the day of his martyrdom ap- 
proached — is a scene which needs neither artist to 
depict nor poet to describe. Yet man is never truly 
alone ! Amid the vastness of this world's waste, 
or in the gloomy solitude of the prisoner's cell, God 
is there. The old Hebrew prophet thought himself 
alone when, after having traversed the sands of the 
desert, he hid himself in a cave among the rocks of 
Horeb. There, amid the mountain solitudes, Elijah 
was alone, surrounded only by the still scenes of 
unchanging nature. And yet he was made to feel 
that even there God was with him, that there was 
no such thing as solitude, that every spot through 
the expanse of space was present to the Almighty ; 
that though fancying himself alone he was in contact 
with his Maker. 

So we might be sure ; indeed, we know from his 
last Epistle that the aged Apostle, forsaken by man, 
was not forgotten on high; and his dungeon — (it 
may possibly have been that dark, underground prison 

Q 3 



230 



LAWS IN LIFE SPIRITUAL. 



SERM. VII. 



which is still shown to the traveller, which was 
certainly used for such purposes in the Apostle's 
time 1 , or it may more probably have been some 
other spot) — was tenanted by a heart filled with the 
peace which nothing earthly gives or can destroy, 
and the gloom of his prison was illumined by the 
presence of the God which filleth eternity, and who 
was as much watching over his faithful servant, 
and as much listening to his muttered prayers, as 
if this universe had been a void and Paul its sole 
inhabitant. 

Methinks I can see the Apostle in the conscious- 
ness of this feeling kindling with rapture, as he 
concluded his letter to Timothy, at the thought of 
the mansion of his father's house which was prepared 
for him; the home to him weary with the long 
journey of life, the haven for his spirit, long tempest- 
tossed in persecutions. I admire thee, Paul, in many 
acts of thy life! I admire thy invincible courage 
when proclaiming unwelcome truth before the scoff- 
ing crowd at Athens, and uttering threats of a 
judgment to come when standing at the tribunal 
of Felix, — a freeman, though in chains ! But most 

1 It seems at least that it was used for political prisoners. 
There can hardly be a doubt that the lower of the two dungeons 
in the Mamertine prison was the scene of the execution of 
Jugurtha and Lentulus, and probably of the Samnite general 
C. Pontius. 



SEBM. VII. 



LAWS IN LIFE SPIRITUAL. 



231 



of all do I admire thee when, the tyrant's sword 
being already half unsheathed, I see thee in the 
Koman dungeon, from which there was no prospect of 
emerging except to the Roman scaffold, solitary 
and forsaken of friends, yet looking up with con- 
fidence to that Saviour who never forsakes, and 
breaking forth into the exclamation, " I know whom 
I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able 
to keep that which I have committed to Him against 
that day." 

We have not full particulars of the Apostle's death. 
He was doubtless beheaded, and the traveller may 
still visit the reputed scene of his martyrdom. About 
three miles to the south of Rome, on the heights 
which swell gradually from the eastern bank of the 
river Tiber, there is a solitary glen among green hills. 
There is the spot which is said to have been the 
scene of the Apostle's suffering; there was formerly, 
according to tradition, the Apostle's grave. " The 
beautiful seclusion of the region, surrounded in 
every quarter by the bare hilly downs of the Cam- 
pagna, which are excavated in many spots into dens 
and caves of the earth, similar to those in which 
the early Christians so often took refuge, inspires a 
feeling suitable to the event." 1 

1 The spot is at the Abbadia alle tre Fontane, about three 
miles beyond ikie Basilica of St. Paolo. Spalding's Italy, ii. 33, 
Bunsen's " Beschreibung," iii. part i. p. 460. 

Q 4 



232 



LAWS IN LIFE SPIRITUAL. serm. to. 



Though we know not the particulars of the 
Apostle's death, we may well picture to ourselves 
in imagination the calm and heroic fortitude which 
he would manifest as he was led oat from Rome 
to that scene of execution. He had a conscience 
void of offence both toward God and toward man. 
If he looked backward, he had the remembrance 
of a life well spent; if he looked forward, he had 
the prospect of speedy admission into the presence 
of the Saviour whom through thirty years of mission- 
ary labour he had striven to love. Yet he would 
move forward with a deep sense of the solemnity 
of the moment. He is about to exchange time for 
eternity. In a few moments probation will have 
ceased with him. He will be lost or saved for 
ever. He will be Paul the Apostle no longer; he 
will be simply Paul the sinner, giving account at 
the bar of God. Dare he trust God now, — now 
in this the tremendous moment of his life, now 
in this the crisis of his greatest need? — yes! he 
dare, for God is his friend. God had pity on 
him when he was yet a sinner ; surely, therefore, 
He will have pity on him now that he has been 
His servant. As these thoughts pass through 
his mind, the sadness passes from his face, a look 
of seraphic joy spreads over his countenance and 
illumines every feature; and as he yields up his 
neck to the sword of the executioner, he exclaims 



sebm. vn. LAWS m LIFE SPIRITUAL. 233 

in triumphant exultation, " I am now ready to be 
offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. 
I have fought a good fight, I have finished my 
course, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there 
is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which 
the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that 
day ; and not to me only, but unto all them also that 
love his appearing. " 



SERMON VIII. 



THE GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST. 
(Preached at the Chapel Royal, Whitehall, on Whit-Sunday, 1858.) 

4 

John xiv. 16. 

And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you 
another Comforter, that he may abide with you for 
ever. 

It was a sad and anxious moment to the Apostles 
when they stood on the top of the Mount of Olives 
and saw Jesus parted from them and a cloud receive 
Him out of their sight. We may reasonably imagine 
that they stood gazing into heaven, doubting whether 
Jesus had ascended from them for ever, or whether 
His departure was only one of those many mysterious 
disappearances which they had witnessed in the forty 
days which had succeeded to His resurrection, when 
the heavens had suddenly yielded up to them His 
presence, and Jesus had stood in the midst, and had 
as suddenly vanished out of their sight. They might 
well think that He had only gone away for a season ; 



SERM. VIII. 



THE HOLY GHOST. 



235 



but these hopes were dissipated by the appearance of 
the two heavenly messengers, who assured them that . 
Jesus had taken a final farewell, and had departed 
till the last great day : " Ye men of Galilee, why 
stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus 
which is taken up from you into heaven shall so come 
in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven.' 7 
It was then that the Apostles first felt their loss. It 
was then that they knew their loneliness. A band 
of men — most of them rude fishermen from a 
northern province — had left their occupation to 
follow a wonderful teacher, as his associates in sub- 
duing the world ; and now he had vanished and 
abandoned them to subdue that world, as it seemed, 
unaided. 1 

It was at a moment when such thoughts as these 
filled the Apostles' minds, that they would begin to 
turn their hopes to that mysterious promise which 
their Master had not long before given them of a 
Comforter who should be with them in His absence. 
" And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you 
another Comforter, that He may abide with you for 
ever : even the Spirit of truth. I will not leave you 

1 Their feelings of solitude at that moment have been beau- 
tifully depicted by a Spanish lyric poet, Luis de Leon, in his 
hymn, " En la Ascension," beginning " Y dexas, Pastor Santo," &c, 
a translation of which, hardly inferior to the original, will be 
found in Ticknor's " Hist, of Spanish Literature," vol. ii. ch. 9 : 
" And dost thou, holy Shepherd, leave," &c. 



236 THE HOLY GHOST. serm. vm. 

comfortless ; I will come to you. Yet a little while 
and the world seeth me no more ; but ye see me ; 
because I live ye shall live also." Nor did they 
wait long in doubt, for after about ten days the 
surprising miracle happened, that there came from 
heaven a sound as of a mighty rushing wind, and 
they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began 
to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them 
utterance. Of all miracles ever wrought, the gift 
of the Spirit was the most astounding. 

That marvel is a surprising one which the Scrip- 
ture opens up to us in the miracle of creation, when 
it places us at the dawn of created nature; when 
it transports us backward to the depths of a past 
eternity when God was alone. Then as now God 
was; but besides Him there was nothing. The 
Supreme Being existed with universal silence round 
Him. Suddenly his fiat went forth, and the uni- 
verse was peopled with motion and life. Orbs began 
to roll in periodic cycle round His eternal throne, 
and intelligences, sparklings of the Infinite, sprung 
into existence at His bidding. " The morning stars 
sung together, and all the sons of God shouted for 
joy." That, again, was a stupendous miracle worthy 
of a God, the loftiest expression of the tenderness 
of the Almighty, when His own Son was born in 
the village of Bethlehem; stooping to join mankind 
in their sufferings, that He might elevate human 



SERM. VIII. 



THE HOLY GHOST. 



237 



nature along with Him to the throne which He 
had left. Well might the choir of the Heavenly 
hosts break in upon the stillness of the midnight 
with their chant of triumph! Well might inani- 
mate nature respond to the event by launching 
forth a meteor to attract the Eastern sages ! 

But majestic as was the miraculous sight of the 
freshness of the morning of created nature, stu- 
pendous as was the condescension in God becoming 
man, the miracle was, if possible, still more marvellous 
when God the Spirit condescended to come down 
to take His residence in the hearts of men. It was 
an infinite condescension for God to live among men, 
it was a greater one for Him to make His dwelling- 
place within men's hearts. It was a wondrous com- 
fort for His disciples to be able to go to a God 
present on this earth and ask His aid; but it was 
a mightier privilege to know that, without under- 
taking a long pilgrimage to seek the presence of 
a local Saviour, there was help to be found from an 
omnipresent Comforter; that for men of every race 
and rank, without respect of age or sex or condition, 
for the captive and for the free, for the sick and 
for the strong, there was close at hand a Spirit to 
be given in answer to their prayers ; that whereso- 
ever under the broad heaven, on earth, or on sea, 
in the crowded city or in the solitude of the desert, 
one prayer is breathed up to God for His Spirit, 



238 



THE HOLY GHOST. 



SERM. VIII. 



then from the Invisible, that Spirit breaks forth; 
and though not with rushing wind or tongues of fire, 
yet within the soul, heart to heart, spirit to spirit, 
He witnesses by the gift of conscious comfort and 
purifying holiness that He is present, the Comforter, 
in Christ's absence, who shall abide with men for ever. 

We cannot wonder that at the first manifesta- 
tion of such descent His presence was marked by 
evidences such as the world had never before seen. 
It is not surprising that the overpowering joy of the 
Spirit's presence in the hearts of that band of wait- 
ing worshippers caused it to be supposed that they 
were drunk with wine. We cannot wonder that the 
greatest of events should be marked with the greatest 
of effects, that ignorant men should suddenly be 
strengthened to speak in other tongues; that the 
stammering disciple should be suddenly turned into 
the eloquent preacher, and the fierce and prejudiced 
Jew into the loving, subdued, hallowed Apostle. 

What then was the special nature of that out- 
pouring of the Spirit? what the special gifts which 
His presence communicated? This is the practical 
and important question for us, if we would ascertain 
how far we have become, or may become, partakers 
of them. They were especially four : — miracle, — in- 
spiration, — holiness, — and religious usefulness. We 
assert, first, that the gift of the Spirit conferred the 
power to suspend nature's laws by the action of 



SERM. VIII. 



THE HOLY GHOST. 



239 



what is usually called miracle; secondly, that it 
strengthened the human intelligence to penetrate 
the world of spirit, and gaze face to face on undis- 
covered truth and reveal it to mankind; thirdly, 
that it was the means of changing unholy men 
into holy ones ; fourthly, that it was manifested in 
a mode which, for want of a better term, may be 
called religious usefulness 1 , by which we mean that 
it accompanied the ministry of those who possessed 
it in such a manner that their words produced, in 
a supernatural degree, a moral effect on those that 
heard them. But while we assert that these four 
gifts were conferred on the Apostles by the miracle 
of Pentecost, we do not claim them all as the 
privilege of ordinary Christians, nor as the per- 
manent gifts which the Divine presence was to 
confer. If we briefly survey each class, we shall 
be able to understand how many of these gifts were 
temporary and how many perpetual; which of them 
were special and which general. 

1. The first form in which the gift of the Holy 
Spirit manifested itself, was in conferring the power 
of working miracles to aid in the propagation of 
Christianity. 

There is scarcely a fact in the history of the 

1 The meaning of this phrase will be made clear hereafter. It 
is intended to be comprehended (as well as prediction of the 
future) in the apostolic word "prophecy," in 1 Cor. xii. 10. 



240 



THE HOLY GHOST. 



SERM. VIII 



world better attested than the Christian miracles. 
The whole evidence of history must be belied if 
their existence is denied. The proof by which the 
reality of the great characters of history, and of their 
deeds, is established, is hardly more certain than the 
evidence from cotemporary testimony of the exist- 
ence of the Apostles, and the actual reality of their 
miracles. 1 And it is a proof of the cogent evidence 
which has been brought to bear upon this sub- 
ject, that sceptics have latterly ceased to attack it. 2 
There may be difficulties in religion, and there may 
be weak points in the evidence of it, but this weak- 
ness is not in the department of miracles. If indeed 
we had no cotemporary proof, we might almost 
argue that some kind of supernatural support was 
vouchsafed to the early Christian missionaries, if 
we only measure their success against the means 
employed. 3 A few illiterate peasants from the shores 
of the lakes of Galilee set forth to convert the 
world. As they spoke, men were pricked to the 
heart, and joined themselves to them. By the testi- 

1 The clever work of Archbishop Whately, " Historic Doubts 
on Napoleon Buonaparte," has for its object the establishment of 
this point. 

2 The allusion here is to the fact that modern critics {e.g. 
Strauss, " Leben Jesu") have found it necessary to explain away 
the Evangelists' narratives by reducing them to myths instead of 
denouncing the miracles as simple fables, as writers of the last 
century were accustomed to regard them. 

3 See Milman's " Bampton Lectures," Lect. vi. p. 269. 



serm. viii. THE HOLY GHOST. 241 

• 

mony of the heathen philosopher Pliny 1 , the converts 
became changed men, and the progress of the religion 
was so great, that whole provinces in a short time 
bowed before the new faith. Was this a common 
religion like the many systems which this world 
has seen ? It bore this difference : it was a system 
narrow, exclusive, unadapted to the tastes of men, 
though marvellously adapted to their moral wants. 
It was favoured by no earthly power, it offered no 
earthly reward, it pandered to no prejudice, stooped 
to no passion, admitted no collusion. What quality 
then did it contain which proved so attractive ? 
Search among the religions of the world, and you 
will perceive the contrast which it bore to them. 
Try to penetrate through the mists of twenty-four 
centuries of Hindoo history to the origin of Boodh- 
ism, and you will find that it was not a new 
creed, but the vigorous expression of a moral re- 
former who awoke the religious instincts of his 
countrymen. 2 Trace the rise and progress of Maho- 
metanism, and you will discover that it owed its 
progress to the sword> or to the lust of war, or that 
it was at best but the reflection of Arabian thought, 

1 Pliny's "Letter to Trajan," Ep. x. 97. 

2 The view of Boodhism here adopted is that which would 
make it part of a movement in the East to which Confucius's 
revolution in China is analogous, probably about 600 B.C. But 
see the account of the Journeys of the Boodhist Pilgrim, Hhouen- 
thsang, recently translated from the Chinese. 

R 



242 THE HOLY GHOST. seem. vm. 

r 

the embodiment of the primeval patriarchal unita- 
rianism, which had always swayed the thoughts of 
those sons of the desert. Christianity, on the other 
hand, aimed a "blow at every prejudice, and was 
founded on a revulsion of previously known prin- 
ciples. How can you account for the mightiness 
of that result from the smallest of causes? Why 
did the heathen world bow before the messengers 
who came forth from a retired district of an insig- 
nificant Roman province ? Suppose a person medita- 
ting upon this circumstance without being acquainted 
with the facts of the history, would he not be com- 
pelled to admit some potency of earthly evidence, 
or some proof of supernatural power? 1 And that 
presumption is true. Christianity made all its ad- 
vances by argument and proof. Its missionaries 
healed the sick and raised the dead, and miraculously 
spoke tongues which they had never learned; and 
men saw these things and marvelled, and perceived 

1 Most readers would admit that Gibbon's enumeration of the 
supposed causes which may have led to the spread of Christianity 
is utterly inadequate to the explanation of the phenomenon. It is 
true that the five causes which he suggests, really were not without 
their influence, for Christianity was so all-embracing in its 
operation, that it included those among others ; but they were 
conditions, not causes, of its spread. Gibbon's chapters on Chris- 
tianity are rather a subject of regret than of alarm or bitterness. 
It is pitiable to see a mind such as his, unapproachable in its 
greatness — the Michael Angelo of history — demean itself by 
such sophistry. 



SEEM. VIII. 



THE HOLY GHOST. 



243 



that God had spoken, and they gave ear and ac- 
cepted the doctrine which those mighty wonders 
attested. We pause not to inquire into the possi- 
bility of miracles ; we cannot even spare a moment, 
on the present occasion, to reconcile their existence 
with the great government of the Almighty by 
general laws ; but we accept the fact, and we refer 
to the mighty outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost 
as the cause ; and we recognise in the potency of 
these evidences the first of those great acts of help 
to the weakness of the early missionaries, which 
led Christ so emphatically to describe His offices, 
when he predicted his coming, as being those of the 
Comforter. 

Was then this gift of miracles temporary or per- 
petual, special or universal ? The answer to this 
question must be found in the fact. Miracles have 
ceased, and hence we argue the temporary character 
of it. Antecedently we should have expected its 
perpetuity ; but we accept the experience of history 
as proof of the error of our anticipations. It is un- 
necessary to pause to ascertain whether miracles 
have been occasionally repeated at long intervals by 
the pious faith and prayers of saintly men. 1 We 
rather would ask what was the reason why the gift, 
once so abundant, was so soon withdrawn. The 



1 Compare Dr. Arnold's "Lect. on Mod. Hist." p. 105. 
r 2 



244 



THE HOLY GHOST. 



SERM. VIII. 



reason would appear to be this. The office of 
miracles was merely to awaken human curiosity to 
the heaven-sent message ; when men once turned 
their ear to listen, the doctrine was allowed to speak 
for itself. The perpetual evidence of Christianity, 
unassailable by the advance of science or the acute- 
ness of criticism, is that it links itself to every human 
want and responds to every human susceptibility; 
and thus when the missionaries had once established 
by miracles their claim to be considered divine mes- 
sengers, the mighty proof was withdrawn, and Chris- 
tianity was left to work its way by moral evidence. 
The external demonstrative proof was only for the 
purpose of arousing attention 1 ; the internal appeal 
to human candour was to effect the rest. The 
Almighty was not in the earthquake nor in the 
storm, but in the still small voice of persuasion and 

1 The comparative logical weight of the internal and external 
evidences of Christianity is a subject which still demands treat- 
ment. The view here intended is that the external evidences, 
such as miracle, prophecy, martyrdom, &c, were mainly designed 
to arrest attention, in order that the internal appeal to the moral 
consciences of men might have a fair field for producing its appro- 
priate effect. It is observable, in confirmation of this view, that 
on the only occasion on which we find St. Paul to have met with 
an intellectual audience, able to appreciate evidence, and willing 
to listen to it, viz. at Athens, he wrought no miracle ; but ap- 
pealed wholly to argument. If this view be correct, political 
power, in obtaining a hearing for Christianity in heathen lands, 
performs at this present time the analogous function to that which 
the external evidences fulfilled in the early ages of the Church. 



SERM. VIII. 



THE HOLY GHOST. 



245 



of conscience ; and so we think we can discern it to 
be a beautiful example of Almighty wisdom that 
miracles were withdrawn when they were no longer 
needed, that the Spirit ceased thus to comfort when 
the Church was no longer mourning for this aid. 

2. We asserted, secondly, that the influence of the 
Holy Spirit strengthened the minds of the Apostles 
to discover truth and elevated them to reveal it with 
an inspired authority. This was a blessing which 
Christ had distinctly promised to His disciples when 
He said, " I have yet many things to say unto you 
but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when He, 
the Spirit of Truth, is come, He will guide you into 
all truth, and He will show you things to come." 
Our Lord had taught a germ of truth while on earth 1 , 

1 The view here intended is that the teaching of the Apostles, 
after the Pentecostal gifts, was in advance of that which our 
blessed Lord communicated while on earth. This can* not only be 
shown by fact, but is implied by the Evangelist when he said that 
" the Spirit was not then given, for Jesus was not yet glorified." 
(John vii. 39.) The work of our Lord on earth as a teacher was 
the reformation of doctrine and practice ; that of the Apostles 
was reconstruction. Our Lord taught the spiritual meaning of 
the Jewish law, and showed that Judaism was fulfilled ; the 
Apostles taught that Christianity was not merely Judaism ful- 
filled, but J udaism abolished. Antecedently to the Transfiguration, 
our Lord taught only that he was the Messiah ; subsequently to 
that event, that he was the Messiah to suffer; but it was the 
Apostles, and specially the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
who were the first to explain the doctrine of the Atonement, the 
interpretation of the Jewish law, and the internal spiritual life of 
Christians. According to the view here advocated, the stages of 

r 3 



246 



THE HOLY GHOST. 



SERM. VIII. 



but He here promised to send to the Apostles a 
Divine Spirit which should illuminate them to 
discover a deep and mystical meaning where they 
had not before seen it, and to penetrate into the 
world of unseen realities, and evoke from its depths 
discoveries new in character and invaluable in im- 
port. It must indeed be frankly admitted that a 
human element, as well as a divine, is traceable in 
the writings of the Apostles. Those favoured men 
did not lose their personality beneath the over- 
powering majesty of the mysterious inspiration. 
They were not mere automatons, mechanically ut- 
tering words which they understood not. Yet, while 
they were left to express the divine truth according 

Divine revelation would be as follows, each in advance of the 
other : — (1) the Patriarchal ; (2) the Mosaic ; (3) the Prophetic ; 
(4) the teaching of St. John the Baptist and of our Blessed 
Lord until Jhe Transfiguration ; (5) the teaching of our Lord 
after that event ; (6) the teaching of the Apostles. The differ- 
ence between the Mosaic and Prophetic dispensations is made 
clear by Davison in his " Lectures on Prophecy." The growth 
in the teaching of the Apostles is made clear in Neander's 
" History of the Planting of the Early Church." Evidences of 
smaller differences and of less plainly marked advances might be 
found under most of these periods. Thus, for example, in the 
last of those mentioned, the Apostolic teaching, we might perhaps 
enumerate as subordinate distinctions : — (a) the Jewish school of 
teaching of St. James and St. Peter ; (/3) the Gentile school of 
St. Paul ; (y) the Alexandrian school of the writer of the He- 
brews ; and (S) t the intuitional school of St. John. " But all these 
worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man 
severally as He will." 



SERM. VIII. 



THE HOLY GHOST. 



247 



to their different habits of mental thought and 
different modes of human expression, there was in 
the truth which they conveyed a great reality which 
they had not discovered by unassisted reason, — a 
reality into which the Spirit of truth himself had 
deigned to guide them. The treasure was in earthen 
vessels ; but in itself it was divine. 

The question will suggest itself whether this great 
gift of the Comforter remains, or whether it, like the 
gift of miracles, has departed. The answer must 
be given that in great part it has disappeared, and 
for a similar reason. As the gift of miracles was 
continued only so long as was necessary for gaining 
a hearing for Christianity among the heathen, so the 
gift of inspiration was continued only so long as was 
necessary for evolving the body of Christian doctrine. 
Yet there is a sense, though a far humbler one, in 
which the Spirit does still illuminate religious men. 
Such is the play of human emotion with human 
thought, and especially when the mind attempts to 
judge on religious questions, that it is impossible for 
a man (be his clearness of mind as great as it may) 
to apprehend religious truth unless his heart be 
touched to feel the value of that truth, and his 
prejudices lulled to allow him to give it a hearing. 
It is this great gift which the all-sanctifying Spirit 
confers now as of old. We do not claim that He 
interferes with the mental laws which govern thought, 

R 4 



248 



THE HOLY GHOST. 



SERM. VIII. 



but we claim it as a fact alike of human experience 
and of psychological science, that some means of 
controlling human prejudice, in order to secure an 
honest judgment on such questions, is necessary ; 
and experience seems to prove that the Spirit of God 
vouchsafes such help even now to all that seek it, 
and will, we may infer, continue to do so as long as 
that help shall be needed, i.e. until time shall be no 
longer. 

3. The consideration of the last-named gift of the 
Spirit leads, by a natural transition, to that which 
was noted as the third of His blessed offices, viz. the 
changing unholy men into holy ones. The mani- 
festation of this great fact is seen in the history of 
the Pentecostal miracle. The intellectual growth of 
the Apostles' minds by that visitation is not more 
marked than the moral change which passed over 
their characters. It is not more extraordinary 
to find the blind prejudices disappear from the 
Apostles' minds, and the ambition for an earthly 
monarchy fade before the clearly seen vision of the 
spiritual kingdom, than to see the weak made strong, 
the timid bold, the fierce hallowed into meekness. 1 
The selfsame Peter who had quailed before the 
suspicion of the servant-maid and had denied with 
oaths his knowledge of Jesus, now stood up before 

1 See Neander's " History of the Planting of the Early Church," 
vol. i. ch. 1. 



SERM. VIII. 



THE HOLY GHOST. 



249 



assembled crowds to proclaim the crucified, with the 
courage which Christ had foreseen when He had 
declared that he was the rock on which He would 
build His church. 1 The same John who had wished 
to call down fire on the Samaritans for their in- 
civility now became a pattern of gentleness ; the 
Son of Thunder was subdued into the Apostle of 
Love. Stephen proved himself to be so influenced 
by this mighty change that in a few days he yielded 
up his spirit with heroic fortitude in triumph, mut- 
tering with his dying breath forgiveness towards his 
murderers. And not in pillars of the Church only, 
but in the humble members of it, there is evidence 
of the same absence of selfishness, the same devotion 
to God, and the same love of man. 

Let us pause a moment here to contemplate this 
wondrous work ; for we are not here dealing with a 
gift which, like that of miracles or inspiration, has 
passed away. This is the everlasting gift which the 
Holy Spirit confers as really, as fully, in the present 
time as formerly. Now as then, He changes unholy 
men into holy ones. Now as then, He works in the 
hearts of men that mighty change which is the 
indispensable preparation for admission into the 
presence of the God who cannot bear sinfulness. 

We possess a nature prone to evil, and the whole 

1 For the explanation of this promise and its fulfilment, see 
Rev. A. P. Stanley's " Sermons and Essays on the Apostolic Age." 



250 



THE HOLY GHOST. 



SEEM. VIII. 



system of our moral affections is, in a considerable 
degree, disarranged and disorganised. We love sin, 
we do not love God ; we are fettered by the bond 
of selfishness ; our generous instincts are repressed ; 
though endowed with capacities which no finite 
object can satiate, and made to strive after the 
infinite, we abdicate these lofty aspirings, and al- 
low ourselves to be absorbed by the present, and 
our eyes grow dim to the eternal and the future. 
It is the office of the Spirit of Christ as the Com- 
forter to remove this evil. Acting on a man through 
the instrumentality of conscience, the Spirit rouses 
him from the lethargy of his nature, and excites 
in him apprehensions of God's hatred of sin and 
of a judgment to come; sometimes drawing by 
motives of fear, sometimes by motives of love. 
And when the individual is convinced of sin and is 
sensible of his miserable condition, the Spirit suffers 
him not to be overwhelmed by the sight of his own 
worthlessness, but encourages him to seek for mercy 
from Him who is mighty to save. Those influences 
smite only to heal, they awaken the sense of depend- 
ance on God's mercy in Christ, they incline the 
man who is the subject of them to prayer, they 
stir up within him inexpressible longings after holi- 
ness and goodness. Thus by a gradual or sometimes 
a rapid progress, of which we are not permitted 
to trace every stage, the heart of stone is removed, 



SERM. VIII. 



THE HOLY GHOST. 



251 



and the heart of flesh is substituted. The soul 
which once loved sin begins to love God, the selfish- 
ness which once ruled dies away, and the generous 
instincts of love struggle, as with the force of a 
pent-up fire, to express themselves in acts of mercy. 
We cannot now pause to trace the continued pro- 
gress of goodness in that soul; the help which is 
vouchsafed to it in its sorrows, the support in its 
temptations, the grace communicated to it in the 
sacraments; yet as we mark that mighty change, 
and think of the Spirit dwelling in that heart, and 
remember that this gift is for us and for our 
children's children as much as for the churchmen 
of old, can we fail to understand how truly our 
Lord called the Holy Ghost a Comforter, when He 
promised, " I will pray the Father and He shall 
give you another Comforter that He may abide with 
you for ever " ? 

4. But the catalogue of blessings imparted by 
the Comforter, and implied in the promise of His 
gift, is not yet complete. We asserted that, besides 
the gifts of miracle, and inspiration, and holiness, 
there was a fourth conferred in Apostolic times, the 
gift of religious usefulness, by which was meant 
that the Spirit of God miraculously and mysteriously 
accompanied the words of the Apostles to the hearts 
of men. It is this gift which is called in St. Paul's 
Epistles, in his catalogue of the gifts of the Holy 



252 



THE HOLY GHOST. 



SERM. VIII. 



Spirit, the gift of "prophesying;" which did not 
(as it would seem) imply solely the power to predict 
events, but was a special power, analogous to the 
gift of natural eloquence, of expounding religious 
truth with probably a preternatural power of 
operating by means of it on the hearers. Here 
again we encounter a gift which mainly was con- 
fined to the Apostolic age; yet, surely, not wholly 
so. For it is not, surely, wrong to anticipate 
Christ's presence to accompany His word and His 
sacraments to the end of time ; nor is it mere hypo- 
thesis to suppose that, whenever in the history of 
the Church there has been a great religious awaken- 
ing, there has been a manifestation of the operation 
of the Spirit of God on men's hearts ; that wherever 
an apostolic man has arisen, burning with apostolic 
love, and moved with apostolic zeal, and praying 
with apostolic piety, and exercising a ministry 
marked by apostolic success, the Church has seen 
repeated in such earnestness the Holy Spirit's gift 
of prophesying, the evidence of the continued opera- 
tion of the Comforter. Proofs of this assertion 
cannot be oifered in the limits of this discourse, 
yet an allusion may be made to one or two examples 
of the great outpourings of religious influences which 
history has presented, as evidences that the moral 
power of Christ's Spirit was not confined to the 



SEEM. VIII. 



THE HOLY GHOST. 



253 



Apostolic age; and the examples shall not be se- 
lected from the catalogue of those movements to 
which' the world is accustomed to appeal as the 
visible evidence of the operation of God's Spirit in 
dissipating error and improving civilisation; but 
shall be drawn from among the mystics of the earth, 
from men whose primary object was not the advance 
of civilisation, and in some of whom the heavenly 
truth may not have been unmixed with human 
error; for in them the effects of goodness which 
are traceable, will for that very reason be more 
naturally ascribed to superhuman energy. 

The first instance shall be purposely selected from 
one of the apparently fanatical movements of the 
middle ages, and from the history of a Church from 
which the established Church of England has justly 
separated itself, and against the doctrines of which 
it specially protests; a Church in which, neverthe- 
less, God in His mercy has been pleased to stir up 
souls for Himself in spite of the manifold errors 
which have impeded their holy work, and dimmed 
their perfect brightness. For it is one of the special 
glories of this hallowed festival 1 , that in commemora- 
ting the gifts of the universal Spirit, we can outstep 
the narrow limits of creed or party, and thankfully 
trace the Spirit's work in all who, in every place 



1 Whit Sunday. 



254 



THE HOLY GHOST. 



SERM. VIII. 



or in every creed, have feared God and wrought 
righteousness. 

About the year a.d. 1200 1 , in a retired town of 
Central Italy, called Assisi, there lived a gay young 
man who was brought to the gates of the grave by 
illness. He felt death at hand, and was unprepared 
for it. The Spirit of God touched his heart ; he be- 
gan to prepare himself for it ; and when health un- 
expectedly returned to him, he threw aside his gaiety, 
and retired to the mountains to lead the life of an 
hermit. There in the solitudes of the grand chain 
of mountains which stretches through Central Italy 
he communed with God, as the prophets of old ; and 
returning in the strength of his pious convictions, he 
spent his life in arousing men to a religious life. 
The plain which surrounded his humble dwelling 
was frequently occupied by thousands of weeping 
penitents. His followers formed themselves into 
one of the monastic orders, which has always made 
itself remarkable above its rivals for its devotion 
to the wants of the sick and the poor; and after 
leading a saintly life, the founder died, and has 
been ever since held in reverence throughout Chris- 
tendom under the name of St. Francis of Assisi. 

1 The writer, since preaching the above Sermon, has had some 
doubts whether the religious influence of Francis of Assisi has not 
been exaggerated. The best estimate of his character is to be 
found in one of Sir J. Stephen's essays on " Religious Biography." 



SERM. VIII. 



THE HOLY GHOST. 



255 



I will yield to no one in undying attachment to the 
Protestant faith, yet I envy not the heart of that 
traveller who can visit the sanctuary which covers 
the saint's grave without acknowledging the work 
of God's Spirit in his life of piety. That sanctuary 
is a temple of art 1 . Its walls are adorned by fres- 
cos, from the hand of the great masters who revived 
Italian painting. Yet far more glorious than the 
physical glories of that wondrous landscape of the 
southern clime which surrounds that temple, more 
glorious than the works of human genius traced on 
its walls, is the remarkable work of the righteous 
man whose body lies there enshrined ; and I should 
think badly of the piety of the pilgrim who could 
bend over the saint's grave without a tear, and who 
could turn away without a prayer that God would 
be pleased to grant him, free from error, a small 
measure of that heavenly love which burnt so 
brightly in the spirit, and marked the life of Francis 
of Assisi. 

We may cite another instance of the merciful 
influence of the Spirit of God in religious revivals 
which were almost similarly erratic, though not cor- 
rupted with a like admixture of superstition, in 
times nearer to our own, and in our own land. The 
religious state of England was never, since the Ee- 

1 An account of these frescos may be seen in Sir C. Eastlake's 
edition ofKugler's "Hand-book of Painting," vol. i. b. 3, ch. 1. 



256 



THE HOLY GHOST. 



SERM. VIII. 



formation, brought to so low an ebb as at the 
commencement of the last century. The civil wars 
of the preceding age, and the licentious influence 
of the court and of the literature of the time of 
Charles II. 1 , had led to the deterioration of the 
national character and the almost total extinction of 
religious life. What were the means and who were 
the instruments through which the flame of earnest- 
ness was rekindled ? We should belie the facts of 
history if we were to deny their due meed of praise 
in this revival to those individuals who founded, 
in the last century, the irregular religious systems 
then common under different names. 2 A few clergy- 
men of the University of Oxford 3 , assisted by many 
laymen, went about our land preaching with the 
earnestness of the friars of the middle ages, exciting 

1 The allusion here is specially to the dramatic literature of 
that age, an estimate of which is given in Hallam's " Hist of 
Lit." iii. ch. 6, and in Macaulay's essay on " The Dramatists of 
the Restoration." The drama may be regarded as both a cause 
in the formation of a nation's character, and the index of its 
moral tastes. 

2 The name of Methodism is the best known of these systems ; 
but there were several other (though less important) centres of 
religious influence at the same period. Several such appear in 
the " Memoirs of Selina, Countess of Huntingdon," and in " The 
Life of the Rev. G. Whitfield." 

3 The Wesleys and their early friends. See Southey's or 
Watson's "Life of Wesley;" or "Rev. J. Wesley's Journals," 
vol. i. ; or a work on the history of Methodism, entitled " The 
Centenary." 



SERM. VIII. 



THE HOLY GHOST. 



257 



attention by the very eccentricity of their move- 
ments, and arousing the religious feelings of masses 
of the population ; and though most will regret that 
the earnestness was lost to our Church, yet all 
must acknowledge its beneficial influence in remov- 
ing the cold lethargic state of feeling which pre- 
viously existed, and in carrying the light of truth 
into many a benighted region of our land, neglected 
in real heathenism. 

There were agencies too within the Church itself, 
which Providence set in operation, for stirring up 
the hearts of men. One individual pre-eminently, 
in the University of Cambridge 1 , through many 
years used his position to instil into the minds of 
the students the necessity of an earnest practical 
personal piety. You may not accept theology 
exactly as it was there presented. You may think 
that system to have been a very narrow one, and 
very unscientific. You may lay more stress upon 
the Sacraments, and less upon election ; more stress 
upon prayer and less upon faith; yet venture not 
to deny the vitalising influence of the Spirit of God 
through that teaching, in awakening the Church 
to the present energy which stirs the hearts of men 
of all parties. We may vary in opinion from those 
individuals that we have named, yet I cannot but 



1 Rev. C. Simeon. 
S 



258 



THE HOLY GHOST. 



SEEM. VIII. 



express my belief that if, in centuries to come, some 
future Neander 1 should attempt to gather up the 
memorials of piety and of earnest efforts which 
marked the eighteenth century, as that distinguished 
historian, who lately was removed to the Church 
triumphant, collected those which existed in the 
earlier ages of the Church, he will find many 
of his brightest examples, many of his enduring 
confessors, in those who have received the faith 
and admired the labours of Wesley, of Whitfield, and 
of Simeon. 

We have sketched the four principal blessings 
which the great gift of the Holy Spirit conferred 
on Christ's Church, — miracle, inspiration, holiness, 
and usefulness, — and have noticed which were tem- 
porary and which are perpetual. The great gift of 
holiness is for us and for our children for ever, and 
to as many as the Lord our God shall call. I wish, 
in conclusion, to impress upon you the necessity of 
examining yourselves to ascertain whether you have 
the Spirit's gift of holiness; and if not, to urge 
upon you the necessity of seeking it. If you have 
no consciousness of your own sinfulness, of your 
exceeding great needs; if you never know what it 
is to drop the tear of penitence, you have yet to take 

1 Neander, as is well known, devoted great attention in his 
history of the Church to the study of the internal spiritual life 
of Christendom. 



SERM. VIII. 



THE HOLY GHOST. 



259 



the very first steps in conscious religious living. 
And to those of you who have in some measure 
set out in a real effort towards a religious life, let 
this subject be a warning to see how far, how very 
far, you fall behind that standard of holiness, and 
happiness, and usefulness to which you might attain. 
It rests with yourselves to attain that bliss. The 
Apostles were ordered to continue in prayer to 
obtain the Comforter ; and the law is now as then. 
They that ask receive. In religion, as in common 
life (we say it without irreverence), God helps them 
that help themselves. Make your earnest and con- 
stant supplications to God for the blessings of 
pardon, of holiness, of consolation, and they will be 
given. The Comforter has been imparted, and God 
has been pleased to place His influences within 
human reach by making them to be obtainable by 



s 2 



SERMON IX. 



PROVIDENCE m POLITICAL REVOLUTIONS. 1 



(Preached before the University, January 30th, 1855 ) 



Peoverbs xvi. 4. 



The Lord hath made all things for himself; yea, even 
the wicked for the day of evil. 



The Hebrew monarch here expresses his conviction 



superintended by the providence of God, so that even 



to many passages of Scripture in which God's pro- 
vidence is so spoken of, as to seem to exclude human 

1 The abolition of King Charles's day, and of the other political 
services, seems to render an apology necessary for the publication 
of a Sermon on a subject now obsolete. As the publication of it 
was, however, earnestly requested at the time when it was 
preached, and as the subject is treated in such a manner as to 
elicit political and historical principles which can never become 
extinct, the writer ventures to allow the sermon to appear in print. 



that the whole course of nature 





serm. ix. PROVIDENCE IN REVOLUTIONS. 261 

freedom. Thus the Lord is said to have " hardened 
Pharaoh's heart," to have u put a lying spirit in the 
mouth of Ahab's prophets ;" wicked men are stated 
to be "foreordained to condemnation," and the 
righteous to be "predestinated to eternal life ;" 1 all 
which texts must be understood only to refer to that 
general scheme of divine government which sees the 
end from the beginning, and in no sense to exclude 
the idea of man's free agency and responsibility. 

The reason of such a mode of speaking may perhaps 
be found in the tendency which history shows to 
have always pervaded the oriental mind, of looking at 
the acts of men from the divine side to the exclusion 
of the human, — a tendency which, in its ultimate 
development, has degenerated into the fatalism of 
Eastern creeds ; and herein we may observe one of 
those instances where God, in His great gift of a 
revelation, has made use of the peculiarities of human 
thought as the medium of its transmission. The 
treasure is divine, but it is communicated in earthen 
vessels. The theology of the Bible is inspired ; the 
ideas which it offers of God's government and of 
man's character are realities ; but the form under 
which those ideas have been conveyed has partaken 
of the peculiarities of personal or of national thought 
which belonged to those who uttered them, and 

1 Exod. xiv. 4 — 8 ; 2 Chron. xviii. 21 ; Jude i. 4 ; Rom. viii. 
29, 30. 

s 3 



262 



PROVIDENCE IN REVOLUTIONS. seem. ix. 



indeed has been accommodated with a marvellous 
wisdom to the circumstances and wants of the ages 
and peoples to whom they have been addressed ; and 
it is for this reason that, in passages such as our 
text, in which the wicked are said to be " made for 
the day of evil," we understand the inspired thought 
(when translated into the modes of thinking of 
European nations) merely to be that the universe 
of events is so arranged and overlooked by the Father 
mind that even the day of evil, which wicked men, 
acting in the strength of human liberty, bring about, 
is made to adjust itself harmoniously — a wheel, as 
it were, within a wheel — into the vast scheme of 
nature ; and so, ultimately, while the wicked bear 
the burden of their own personal responsibility, to 
work out the great purposes which an all-good God 
may design in the government of His works. 

If the thought of Solomon be taken in this sense, 
it will be easily seen how many circumstances had 
occurred, both in the history of his family and his 
nation, to bring home to him the conviction of this 
truth. A mind like his must, doubtless, have often 
marvelled as it meditated on the remarkable deliver- 
ance of his nation from the land of Egypt ; for the 
light of prophecy had shown that this whole passage 
was no accident in the national history, but that the 
evil had contributed to bring out the result equally 
with the good ; or if he thought of that period of 



serm. ix. PROVIDENCE IN REVOLUTIONS. 263 

four hundred years, which intervened between Moses 
and the Prophets, during which there was no open 
vision, and in which the Almighty might almost seem 
to have left the nation to the superintendence of 
merely ordinary laws (as occurred afterwards in the 
corresponding period between the Prophets and the 
Gospel), he may perhaps have marvelled how won- 
drously, in spite of deep internal disorganisation and 
occasional anarchy, the successive schemes of the 
border nations to annihilate the chosen people had 
not only been defeated but made to minister to its 
good ; and if he passed on in thought to the cir- 
cumstances which had attended alike the early and 
later life of his father David, how many a day of evil, 
both of public and family history, would seem to his 
pious mind to have been ordered of God ! how 
frequently would events be seen to have tended to 
the very opposite effects to that for which their 
wicked authors had designed them, just as the 
waters of a river steadily press onward to the 
ocean, even when, by the windings of the course, 
they appear to be flowing directly away from it ! 
how often in such meditations as these might the 
heart of Solomon, overflowing with gratitude for the 
past and exulting with confidence for the future, 
express its experience in the words, " The Lord hath 
made all things for himself ; yea, even the wicked for 
the day of evil." 

s 4 



264 



PROVIDENCE IN REVOLUTIONS. serm. ix. 



But if the experience which Solomon had of the 
world's history, restricted as it was to that of a single 
nation and of a short period of time, yet brought home 
forcibly the conviction of this law of Providence, 
how much greater opportunity has been afforded to 
us of noticing the evidence of its truth. In his day 
the drama of the world's history had hardly begun 
to be acted ; it was not merely, as it were, in its first 
act but in its first scene, and it would have defied 
the skill of the acutest to have anticipated its 
development ; and though the catastrophe is not 
yet come, yet we are able to study the plan of Pro- 
vidence in several distinct epochs and in many 
distinctly marked manifestations under each. We 
can pass in thought beyond the Jewish nation, and 
view the successive centres of power and of civilisa- 
tion which sprung up in the ancient world. We 
can study the display of human passion in its fiercer 
and darker forms, in that period of general convul- 
sion, of the universal extinction, as it at the time 
appeared, of all order, and maturity, and goodness, 
which marked the overthrow of the great empire 
which had absorbed the other powers. We can see 
how the darkness of that night of barbarism passed 
away before the voice of Him who commanded, Let 
there be light ; and how the brightness of law, and 
learning, and liberty dawned again upon the earth. 
And still further, in each of those empires which 



see. m.» ix. PROVIDENCE IN REVOLUTIONS. 



265 



have arisen in the modern world, many instances, 
alike in their external and internal history, afford 
proofs of the Almighty power, of the Providence, of 
Him who sitteth above the waterfloods and calms the 
storm of human passion. And as the pious mind 
watches in all these successive periods the agency 
and operations of evil, and the marvellous manner in 
which, on the whole, the good has resulted, he must 
feel that the text is brought home to him with a 
fullness of proof which Solomon could not possess. 
The voice of history is seen to declare, " The Lord 
hath made all things for himself ; yea, even the 
wicked for the day of evil." 

The service of this day naturally directs our 
thoughts to one of those periods in the history of 
our own nation ; and as we look back upon it, one 
of the first thoughts which must suggest itself to a 
believer in Providence is admiration at the wonderful 
manner in which that fierce contest, which brought 
into view and enlisted all the best and all the worst 
feelings of men, finally operated so mysteriously 
for good, in spite of the misery of so many years 
of internal convulsion. The effect of the evil was 
temporary ; the good was permanent. 

It is fortunate for us that we are able to view that 
event across the chasm of two centuries. The 
interval has made so marked an alteration in our 
social state, that most of the questions which relate 



266 



PROVIDENCE IN REVOLUTIONS. 



SERM. IX. 



to it may be studied without the party feelings 
which they once called forth. 

We are now able to look at that period as a whole, 
in its consequents as well as its antecedents, and so 
to apprehend its real nature. For, as in estimating 
the effect of a work of human architecture, we are 
compelled to retire to some distairce from it, if we 
wish to understand the unity of the artist's concep- 
tion ; so, if we would view rightly the great deeds of 
God's natural providence, we must first reduce them 
to their true historical perspective ; and hence it is 
that when we observe the religious service of this day 
we do so with a different feeling from that which 
marked its early institution. For its founders viewed 
the scene as actors or spectators ; we know the 
events of it only by narration. Their execration 
was directed against the persons who were distin- 
guished in that revolution, ours against their crimes. 
Their minds could see nothing in the whole period 
but the death of the martyr king ; we, while we can 
lament that cruel act as much as they did, can view 
it as one event in a whole period ; they could only 
see that it was wrong to put to death one of royal 
blood ; we, it is to be hoped, have learned the broader 
lesson, that it is wrong to employ capital punish- 
ment for any merely political offence whatever. 
They instituted the service to deprecate a trespass 
on the divine right of monarchical institutions ; we 



serm. ix. PROVIDENCE IN REVOLUTIONS. 267 



retain it to assert our conviction of the divine right 
of human government. 

We shall, accordingly, employ our time more pro- 
fitably on the present occasion if we rise from the 
consideration of this single event to the contempla- 
tion of a general fact of God's providential govern- 
ment ; for thus, instead of reviving worn-out contro- 
versies or exciting party-spirit, we shall bear away 
that deep and reverential feeling which arises when- 
ever we are made to perceive, by the study of God's 
general laws, something of the majesty, and wisdom, 
and goodness of Him, who filleth all in all. 

The great fact to which attention is now asked is 
this, — that God has been pleased so to order the 
structure and arrangements of society, that even the 
suffering of periods of internal national convulsion is 
compensated by consequent good, and that the self- 
ishness of parties of which those revolutions are the 
effect and the manifestation, is overruled for the ad- 
vancement and general happiness of society. A law 
like this is no defence for revolution, — it is no 
apology for insurrection. It is merely an argument 
from Final Causes in behalf of the moral attributes 
of the Almighty. It is one example of the truth 
which the piety of Solomon expressed in the words, 
u The Lord hath made all things for himself ; yea, 
even the wicked for the day of evil." 



268 



PROVIDENCE IN REVOLUTIONS. serm. ix. 



It is necessary, however, before we develope the 
proof of the assertion, to point out briefly its bearing 
upon the general argument. 

No fact has been made more clear, from the dis- 
coveries of science, than the abundance of beneficent 
arrangements which exist in nature. Each science 
contributes examples to the collective argument. 
Yet, wonderful as are the proofs of divine goodness 
drawn from obvious instances of beneficence, they 
are not so striking as those which arise from observ- 
ing the system of compensations ordained in nature 
for the misery and evil which exist. 

It gives me a noble idea of the Divine Being when, 
as I watch the stars which move in the evening sky, 
I conceive of them as sustained in their orderly 
course according to a few simple intelligible laws ; 
but how vastly is my idea deepened, both concerning 
the majesty and beneficence of the Almighty, when, 
in reflecting on the disturbances which they are 
generating in one another's movements, and trem- 
bling to think of the universal catastrophe which in 
the depths of future time those disturbances may 
bring about, I see that the subtle results of calcula- 
tion demonstrate that a system of compensations of 
amazing grandeur is at work, and that the laws 
which the Divine Being has impressed upon matter 
guarantee the stability of the systems which He has 



sebm. ix. PROVIDENCE IN REVOLUTIONS. 



269 



created'! 1 Or when I restrict my view to phenomena 
of this earth, which seem not to speak of a God of 
love, what an idea do I obtain of the divine goodness, 
when it is made apparent that even the volcano's fire, 
which seems only fraught with desolation, is made 
the instrument of replenishing the whole vegetable 
kingdom, and thus, indirectly, the family of man, 
with a supply of those material principles which are 
necessary for its continued support ! 2 The great fact 
of the permission of physical evil is brought before 
the inind in a new aspect. That single apparent ex- 
ception to the divine goodness is seen to be marked 
by evidences of it ; and the surprise which the dis- 
covery excites, renders the argument irresistible. 

And though analogy would hardly warrant an 
expectation that the intractable phenomena of moral 
and social evil would yield to explanation as readily 
as those already cited of physical mischief, yet here 
also experience brings to light the existence of a 
system of laws which are as comprehensible and un- 
changeable as those which regulate the universe of 
brute matter. Now, of social phenomena there are 
two classes, which at first view seem fraught with 
woes without commensurate blessings, and which a 

1 Lagrange's "Problems," referred to before in the first three 
Sermons. 

2 See the concluding chapter on " The Final Causes of Vol- 
canoes," in Dr. Daubeny's work on that subject. 



270 



PEOVIDEN-CE IN REVOLUTIOXS. seem. ix. 



sceptic might regard as an objection to the idea of 
the government of a merciful creator ; viz. external 
war and internal convulsion. The argument might 
be applied to the former of these topics ; and war 
could be shown, however immense an evil in itself, 
to have contributed to the progress of civilisation, 
and the final result of most of the conquests which 
the world has witnessed, be proved to have been 
beneficial ; but it is not so obvious that the same 
remark applies to the latter subject. It is, accord- 
ingly, my object to extend the argument on the 
divine benevolence to embrace this class of pheno- 
mena. It is intended to assert that, irrespective of 
the particular deeds of the parties whose interests 
may operate in public disorders, the general effect of 
such convulsions in the order of Providence is not 
the misery which would be antecedently expected 
from them. 

There are two principal respects in which divine 
providence overrules the misery of revolution, viz. 
in making it contribute to the material and the 
moral welfare of man; — the material, in the ad- 
vancement of liberty and happiness ; the moral, in 
the formation of national character and opinion. 

The few moments of our present service will not 
admit of that induction of particular instances of 
revolutions, which would be the natural mode of 
establishing this assertion. It must suffice to indi- 



seem. ix. PROVIDENCE IN REVOLUTIONS. 



271 



cate the mode in which these advantages are brought 
about, and to advert to some features in the history 
of the revolution to which our thoughts are this day 
turned, which will afford illustration and verification 
of them. 

I. History seems to show two facts in relation to 
society as fundamental circumstances of its existence ; 
first, that society is in a state of progress, and 
secondly, that it is a progress towards a condition of 
equality. 1 

Power and government are given to be used for 
the good of others, and not for the benefit of the 
possessor ; they are a trust, and not a right. If this 
thought could be felt and acted upon, revolution 
would be unknown ; when it is forgotten and vio- 
lated, a convulsion is the terrible means of reassert- 
ing it. Wherever we possess the history of a 
revolution we shall find that it has always arisen 
from an opposition to the unalterable fact, that 
society is in a state of growth to maturity, and that, 
accordingly, institutions which are a blessing to one 
age may, after a lapse of time, cease to work for 
good ; that power which is wisely withheld from men 
unfit to use it, becomes the right of people who are, 
by education or circumstances, fitted for its posses- 

1 This subject may be studied in Aristotle's "Politics," b. v. ; 
in Vico's " Scienza Nuova ;" in Dr. Arnold's " Thucydides," vol. i. 
appendix 1 ; in Thirl wall's "Greece," vol. i. ch. vii. ; in Lucas's 
« English Prize Essay, at Oxford, 1845." 



272 



PROVIDENCE IN REVOLUTIONS. serm. ix. 



sion. Nor is it an objection to this doctrine that 
the point at which power ought to be conceded 
cannot be precisely laid down ; for this is only 
stating a difficulty which is common to all sciences, 
which, like that of government, consider only pro- 
bable evidence, and which, after exhibiting a prin- 
ciple, commit the execution of its details to the agent 
as part of his moral trial. 

If then there be a truth in this principle, it is clear 
that revolution is made in the hands of Providence 
a good, if it is the means of developing that progres- 
sive growth in society which is its ineffaceable 
property. The assertion does not involve the pro- 
priety of revolution. The end may be good, the 
means which men employ for its attainment may be 
indefensible ; it only postulates that through the 
means, whether right or wrong, the great end of 
public liberty and consequent happiness is brought 
about, and the beneficence of the Almighty thus 
shown in constructing society in such a manner that 
even the severity of revolution ministers to the per- 
manent good of man ; that the Lord hath made all 
things for himself, even the wicked for the day of 
evil. 

If we apply this principle to the case of our own 
revolution we shall remark an illustration of its 
truth. 

In order that we may see how this particular case 



serm. ix. PROVIDENCE IN REVOLUTIONS. 273 

is an instance of the law of progress just stated, we 
should notice that it assumed the form not so much 
of a contest for new rights, as of a protest against the 
infringement of those which already existed. This is 
a feature common to all the struggles of that age in 
European states, and forms a sufficiently marked con- 
trast with those which we see exemplified in the ancient 
world. The cause is that, when about the beginning 
of the sixteenth century the several European nations, 
for the first time, began to act in their international 
relations as united kingdoms, each of them sepa- 
rately possessed in itself the reality of present and 
the prospect of future liberty. It was the heritage 
handed down from the past, the mixed result of the 
free institutions which were introduced by the bar- 
barians who overran the Roman empire, and the 
municipal and social institutions which Rome had 
communicated to the world, and which survived the 
nation which had established them. 1 But at the 
time of which we speak, this liberty was to be put 
to a severer trial than it had ever known. It had 
outlived the incursions of barbarism ; it was now to 
suffer danger from the very advance of civilisation. 
Eor the circumstance which then enabled the different 
nations of Europe to take their position in the Eu- 
ropean system was, that they had each lately, for the 

1 See Guizot's " Hist, of Civilisation," vol. i. ch. vi. x. ; and 
Sir J. Stephen's " Lect. on Hist, of France," vol. i. ch. iii. iv. 

T 



274 



PROVIDENCE IX REVOLUTIONS. 



SEKM. IX 



first time, become consolidated into united kingdoms. 
The fragments of civilisation had existed in the 
middle ages ; but the attempts of great minds, such 
as Charlemagne and Hildebrand, to re-unite those 
fragments had been baffled. 1 Xature, however, in 
due time brought about that which they were unable 
to effect, first by joining the scattered elements of 
each state into one nation, and then by cementing the 
various nations of Europe into one confederation by 
the common principles of a states-system and law of 
nations. 

It was in this centralisation of power that the 
peril to public liberty in that age arose. The legis- 
lative and judicial functions were so arranged as to 
be a sufficient guarantee of liberty ; but they were 
now, for the first time, in danger of succumbing to 
the executive. Hence the form which the struggles 
for public liberty took, was that of the defence of the 
ancient constitutions. That this danger extended 
to England also at that period none will be prepared 
to deny. There may be differences of opinion as to 
the amount of opposition which the measures of the 
administration justly provoked. Some, for example 2 , 
may think that liberty was sufficiently secured by 
the first session of the long parliament in the spring 
of 1641, without the institution of an ex post-facto 

1 G-uizot's " Hist, of Civilization," vol. i. ch. iii. vi. x. 

2 As Hallam, in his " Constitutional History." 



SERM. IS. 



PROVIDENCE IN REVOLUTIONS. 



275 



law to punish the supposed public offenders ; others 1 
may judge that further guarantees were required in 
dealing with a government which had flagrantly 
violated its own promises given to the Petition of 
Eight twelve years previously ; but whichever view 
be taken, there is not an Englishman living who will 
deny the peril in which public liberty was placed in 
the early part of the reign of Charles I. by the plans 
of his counsellors. If proof were asked, it may be 
found in the private letters of that acute statesman 2 
who directed for many years the king's counsels. We 
there find that, enamoured with the beauty of the 
principle of centralisation as carried out in the pre- 
ceding century in Spain, and in his own day by the 
cardinal statesman who directed the counsels of 
France; he had planned schemes for increasing the 
power of the executive until the government of 
England should be assimilated to those of absolute 
kingdoms. Whether the success of such a scheme 
would have been for the good of this country will be 
seen if you further take into account the probability 
which existed at that time (a probability which sub- 
sequent events have made a fact) that England 
would rise in the scale of European kingdoms, and 

1 As Macaulay, in his review of Hallam's " Constit. Hist.," 
Essays, vol. i. 

2 The references to " Wentworth's Correspondence " are given 
in Macaulay's " Hist, of England," vol. i. ch. xii. 

x 2 



276 



PROVIDENCE IN REVOLUTIONS. 



SERM. IX. 



would consequently be compelled to establish a 
standing army. 1 For this circumstance was now 
about to give, for the first time, a power to the 
Prince to carry out his will in spite of the will of 
the nation. And the history of France may show 
us what would have been the effect in this country, 
if the providence of God had not by the great revolu- 
tion prevented it. In that kingdom the ablest, not 
merely of her many able kings, but one of the most 
talented princes who ever adorned a throne, suc- 
ceeded in crushing the liberties of his country, not 
from the low and selfish motive of his own gratifica- 
tion but under the guidance of the enlightened 
Colbert 2 , from a mistaken view of providing for the 
general happiness of his people ; and the consequence 
was seen soon after his death. He had caused all 
power to depend upon the character of the king. 
His successor, a weak and effeminate prince, was 
unable to carry out his great ideas. The unreality 
of the system was at once revealed to view, and the 
dreadful acts of the first French Kevolution were the 
protest of the people against the abuses of that 
system of government. If we could guarantee the 
perpetuation of a race of kings possessed of perfect 
intellectual and moral qualities we could entrust to 

1 See Macaulay's " Hist, of England," vol. i. ch. i. 

2 For Colbert's administration, see Sir J. Stephen's "Lect. on 
Hist, of France," vol. ii. ch. xxii. 



seem. ix. PROVIDENCE IN REVOLUTIONS. 



277 



them absolute power : but such a property is confined 
to God's government ; it exists not in man's. And, 
therefore, as we cannot ensure the perfect wisdom, 
or the entire goodness of a race of governors, we 
establish public liberty on the basis of a Constitution, 
L e. we surround all those who are invested with 
power with such artificial regulations and conditions 
as may allow them full scope for acting for the good 
of the nation, but may bring them to a stand at once 
if either their judgment or their heart betray them. 

We believe then that at the beginning of the reign 
of Charles I. England was in the great peril of 
passing from a constitutional to an absolute form of 
government, and we assert that the effect of the 
revolution which followed, was to guarantee and to 
assure the continuance of the Constitutional power. 
We are fully alive to the faults and sins of those 
who conducted the revolution ; we do not even 
attempt to defend that revolution itself; it is un- 
necessary to the present argument to do so. We 
speak not of man but of God ; not of human acts 
but of the divine .general plan ; and we assert with 
confidence that any one who looks with pride on the 
British Constitution, and believes that as a whole it 
contains a surer guarantee for public liberty than 
any form of government which the world has ever 
known, must feel that whatever may have been the 
temporary evil of the revolution, the establishment 

T 3 



278 



PROVIDENCE IN REVOLUTIONS. seem. ix. 



of that Constitution on a sure basis was a permanent 
unspeakable good ; we affirm that the providence of 
God, in permitting great periods of public misery, 
is seen nevertheless to compensate for them by 
lasting good. The evil falls on a single generation ; 
the blessings become the everlasting inheritance of 
posterity. We assert that we have justified the 
utterance of Solomon, " The Lord hath made all 
things for himself ; yea, even the wicked for the day 
of evil." 

Yet it may be thought that our attention is called 
to-day, not so much to the Revolution as to its 
crimes, and more especially to that act of malice, 
the spiteful vengeance taken on a helpless prince 
by men too mean to be generous, too selfish to be 
just. This aspect of the revolution contributes a 
most important point in the argument to the Divine 
beneficence. For any one who studies the history 
of that time must marvel how it was, that the country 
ever could free itself from the men into whose hands 
the government had fallen. And the same remark is 
true of all such periods in other nations, as well as 
in that of our own country. Suppose an individual 
in the ancient time attempting in the midst of some 
period of anarchy, such as the civil wars of the 
Roman Triumvirate, to forecast the future of Roman 
history ; or during the great French revolution, won- 
dering, as the faubourgs of the capital poured out 



serm. ix. PROVIDENCE IN REVOLUTIONS. 279 

band after band of revolutionists, each more fierce 
than its predecessors, how society was ever to deliver 
itself from the tyrants which itself had raised, and 
you will realise the beneficence of that law of Pro- 
vidence which enables society to rectify itself. At 
such times, the first leaders of the revolution, men 
of patriotic temper and high principle, succumb to 
impostors who come with unreal schemes of political 
change, and with dark and selfish plans for their 
own aggrandisement. Society is redissolved into 
its primitive elements . Law and moral power give 
place to physical. And yet the day of deliverance 
conies. If it were not so, a convulsion would be 
an unmixed woe, a vial of wrath to the age which 
suffers it, and a curse to posterity. But there is 
in man a tendency to preserve as well as to destroy, 
an instinct against anarchy as well as against 
tyranny. And by this principle a beneficent Pro- 
vidence enables society to free itself from its 
own excesses, and to secure the real blessings which 
it originally coveted, without permanent submission 
to the evils which attended their attainment. 

The civil war in our own history supplies abun- 
dant evidence of the truth of these remarks. Omit- 
ing the many wild schemes of political change which 
were then fermenting in society, we may allude to 
the danger which menaced the established Church 
of this country. The constitution of England did 

T 4 



280 



PROVIDENCE W REVOLUTIONS. serm. ix. 



not undergo a greater peril from the absolutism of 
Wentworth, than the faith, and art, and institutions 
of its Church underwent from the fanaticism of the 
Puritans. While we must always admire the learn- 
ing and personal excellence of many of the Puritan 
clergy, and their steady and praiseworthy (though 
often excessive) attachment to the Protestant faith, 
yet we cannot but feel that the success of their 
principles would have involved the destruction of 
some articles of faith, and some Apostolical institu- 
tions which our Church holds most dear; and would 
especially, by the addition of harsh tests and dog- 
matic creeds, have extinguished that breadth and 
comprehensiveness of character which has always 
formed the glory of the English Church, and would 
have suppressed the freedom of thought which must 
ever be the only permanent safeguard of theological 
truth. And so the character of Charles I. must 
always carry an interest to the hearts of churchmen, 
for one of the chief features of his mind was his 
marked attachment to the English Church. There 
is even something chivalrous in the manner in which 
he and the royal party defended the Church, as 
dearly as the throne. Those heroic men died, and 
their last moments were saddened by the thought 
that their cause was lost ; but they died not in vain. 
They fell defending the breach through which the 
enemy was entering the fortress ; but men, as they 



sekm. ix. PROVIDENCE IN REVOLUTIONS. 



281 



saw them fall, themselves regained their courage, and 
rallied round the standard which they had died de- 
fending. And so the cause of order again revived, 
and the moral again triumphed over the physical. 
Or if you prefer to explain in some other manner the 
play of human passion through which society was 
enabled to reap the solid benefits of the revolution 
without becoming the permanent victim of its ex- 
cesses, you must at least confess that it is the bene- 
ficence of the Almighty which has given society 
the power to preserve itself. Human forces seem 
to hush the chaos of anarchy, but it is the Lord 
who says, Peace; be still. The storm passes away, 
the calm again returns. It is the Lord who " hath 
made all things for himself; yea, even the wicked 
for the day of evil." 

II. We stated that it was not merely in the mate- 
rial, but in the moral benefit of national convulsions 
that the beneficence of Providence can be shown. 

The moral benefits are to be found either in the 
discipline which is administered by them, or in the 
lessons taught. As we distinguish between the 
training and the instruction of an individual mind, 
so also the same difference exists between the gra- 
dual and almost unobserved formation of national 
habits, and the opinions which constitute the popular 
and conscious states of belief. 

The discipline resulting from times of convulsion 



282 



PROVIDENCE IN REVOLUTIONS. 



is necessarily that of suffering. The tendency of 
suffering to produce good, as applied either to an 
individual or a nation, is an allowed fact. Yet it 
may occur to the mind that the suffering of revolu- 
tion, being connected, with party strife, cannot ad- 
minister the same blessings as in instances where 
it arises from external sources. It is obvious how 
an event, such as a public war, may unite a people 
in a common purpose and a common sorrow, and 
tie them by a principle of patriotism in the bond 
of one brotherhood. But it is not so clear how 
good results can follow when the suffering arises 
from strife and division. There is indeed truth in 
this remark. Yet it is the marvellous property of 
pain that it possesses so comprehensive a power, and 
so appeals to every deep susceptibility of our nature, 
that it lays bare some feelings which operate for 
moral discipline, even in a case like this, which at 
first sight is so unpromising. For suffering brings 
home to man a deep practical sense of his own 
insufficiency, and his dependence on a superior 
power. There are two principal feelings in the 
mind, the consciousness of dependence and the con- 
sciousness of power; the latter prompts to action, 
the former to piety. Suffering acts upon the latter ; 
it awakens in us the consciousness of needing help 
which we cannot supply. Like Manasseh in his 
dungeon, we are then ready to call on the Lord 
God of our Fathers. And suffering also draws out 



PROVIDENCE IN REVOLUTIONS. 



283 



some special virtues. Though in mean characters it 
increases only selfishness and cruelty, yet in others 
it calls out courage and generous devotion. It 
singularly happens, too, that a selfish principle is 
added in cases of revolution to assist it; for the 
spirit of party excites a feeling of sympathy with 
those who are ranged on the same side. And, in 
fact, history might be brought in to confirm the 
benefits which theory establishes. 

But suffering serves not only to discipline, but 
to instruct; for linked as it is with the notion of 
sin as its cause, it excites a deep practical hatred 
of the crimes which have produced the suffering. 
And, connected with this, it has a tendency to 
awaken attention and induce inquiry concerning both 
the cause and cure of national convulsions. How 
many lessons might thus be gathered from our own 
revolution ; how many precious maxims of political 
wisdom or moral guidance might be its warning 
to posterity ! Nay, even if it should be found that 
men through carelessness have neglected to gather 
those lessons, yet if it be shown that instruction 
is the natural though not the necessary result of 
suffering, our argument equally proves that even 
in the pain attending on public convulsions, the 
beneficence of the Almighty is manifested. 

"We have now completed our notice of some points 
in relation to public convulsions, in which the good- 
ness of God is seen in bringing permanent good out 



284 



PROVIDENCE IN REVOLUTIONS. seem. ix. 



of temporary evil. And you must be again reminded 
that the argument is irrespective of the question of 
the propriety of any particular revolution, or even 
of revolution in the abstract. We assert that the 
Almighty has been pleased so to govern society that 
he rescues it from the effect (it may be) of its 
own follies ; that he evolves good where we have 
only a right to expect evil ; that " he hath made all 
things for himself ; yea, even the wicked for the day 
of evil." 

In conclusion, we may bear away two valuable 
lessons : 

1. The consideration of the benevolence of the 
Almighty ought to give us confidence in the contem- 
plation of the future prospects of the nation or the 
world. 

At all times, earnest men feel so bitterly the dis- 
appointment of their hopes that they are ready to 
despair of the prospects of mankind. Their expe- 
rience teaches them that the strongholds of evil bid 
defiance to their attacks, — that their efforts for 
social or political amelioration meet only with 
defeat. 1 

And if we look at the material and moral aspect of 
the world, there are many circumstances to suggest 
thoughts of deep sadness. Eighteen hundred years 

1 A paragraph of the original Sermon is here omitted which 
referred to circumstances of war and recent disease, now hap- 
pily past. 



serm. ix. PROVIDENCE IN REVOLUTIONS. 



285 



have passed since the glad tidings were proclaimed 
that a Saviour had come ; and still three-fourths of 
the population of the world have never yet heard of 
His name. Or if we restrict our view to our own 
land, which seems in a special manner to be the home 
of civilisation and piety, what a terrible state of 
society is revealed to us by that single statistic 1 , that 
one-half of our people never enter a place of worship ! 
What prospect is there of reclaiming, even for civili- 
sation itself, the masses crowded by thousands in the 
hearts of our large towns, who have thrown away 
virtue, humanity, and religion ? It is not surprising 
that earnest men should look with gloom on the future. 

But the subject which we have been considering 
may afford some ground of consolation. Though the 
prospect be really dark, — though the shadows of 
night seem closing in upon us, yet at evening time it 
shall be light. There is One above, whose eye is not 
unmindful of this world's history, whose blessed Son 
" tasted death for every man," — who " willeth that 
all men should be saved." And He so manages this 
world's course that He will evolve, by His general 
laws, good out of evil. He rules not in the world 
merely of blind unconscious matter, but in the actions 
of thinking responsible man. The past of the world 
declares that " He hath made all things for Himself ; 
yea, even the wicked for the day of evil." And if we 
could take our stand on some eminence, and trace 
1 A fact of the census of 1851. 



286 



PKOYIDENCE IN KEVOLUTIOXS. seem. ix. 



forward, in the depths of the future, the issue of this 
world's stream of time, we should see it swallowed 
up in the ocean of the divine attributes. We should 
take up the song of Seraphim, and proclaim, that not 
the heaven merely, but the earth also, is full of God's 
glory. 

2. There is a second lesson, which is a very 
practical one, taught us by this subject, viz., to ask 
ourselves whether we are severally, by our conduct, 
co-operating in carrying out the plan of Providence, or 
helping to thwart it. The end of the divine govern- 
ment is goodness. If we are aiming at the same 
result we are filling our proper sphere in the world ; 
if our hearts are full of selfishness toward man and 
disobedience toward God, we are doing our part to 
thwart the great end of the divine administration. 
How blessed a privilege it is to think that we have 
the opportunity, each one of us, of doing our share, 
— aye, though it be the very smallest, — to co-operate 
with God ! How much might we do for the world 
by our efforts if we were to use our opportunities of 
battling with evil ! Let us understand that the way 
to regenerate others is first to renovate ourselves. If 
we would be the means of doing something for God 
and for goodness, we must fix well in our minds that 
we are not to reflect the religious tone of the world, 
but to introduce into the world the elements of 
goodness which it does not possess. It is God the 



SEEM. IX. 



PROVIDENCE IN DEVOLUTIONS. 



287 



Holy Ghost who alone can give them to us. It is He 
alone who can impart to us that religious earnestness 
which shall make us active for His honour and for 
man's welfare. The chief mode of obtaining this divine 
help is by cultivating a habit of communion with 
God by private prayer. This is the secret of any 
good man's life, whether it be one of action or of 
suffering. It was so with the royal prisoner. As 
his troubles thickened round him, and he could find 
no help from friends and no mercy from foes, he was 
wont to betake himself to God for consolation ; and 
hence arose that placid, confessor-like spirit with 
which he bore the sorrows of his closing days, and 
that calm and heroic fortitude with which he met the 
terrors of the hour of death. And we may be certain 
that, whatever be our earthly lot, however humble 
or however great, whether spent in happiness or 
marked with sorrow, if we would secure our own 
usefulness in life, and our own safety in death 
and judgment, we must follow such an example of 
piety, and learn to find a friend in God. For then 
we shall be as polished shafts in the Almighty's 
quiver in the great battle of good against evil ; we 
shall indeed find that evil will give way before us ; 
and, in the blessed consciousness of a life not spent 
altogether in vain, we shall realise in their fulness the 
words of Solomon, " The Lord hath made all things for 
himself ; yea, even the wicked for the day of evil." 



288 PROVIDENCE IN" REVOLUTIONS. sekm. ix. 

Note, 

On the Scene of the Execution of Charles I. 

This seems not to be an unfit place to notice some facts in 
reference to the scene of the king's execution, which have been 
drawn from old engravings and maps, still preserved in the Chapel 
Royal at' Whitehall. The king was executed in front of the 
middle window of the present Chapel Royal, on the side facing 
the present street, and not, as is often supposed, on the other side. 
At that time, instead of the streets and gardens which now lie 
around, an old brick palace existed, not unlike parts of the pre- 
sent one of St. James's. Its outlying quadrangles and buildings 
stretched as far north as the present Scotland-yard, while one 
large quadrangle, containing the royal garden, lay immediately 
to the back of the Chapel Royal ; on the side of which quad- 
rangle, next the river, stood the royal apartments. The street 
which now runs in front of the chapel was about half its present 
width ; a guard-house stood in front of the present Horse-guards, 
while immediately in front of the chapel was a tilting-ground ; 
and a few yards to the south of it, i.e. in the direction of West- 
minster Abbey, a brick archway spanned the street, similar to 
that which now forms the principal entrance to the palace of 
St. James. The banqueting-hall which forms the present Chapel 
Royal, is the only portion ever completed of a grand design of 
James I. for rebuilding the palace. The older portion of the 
palace was destroyed by fire in the time of William III., and the 
banqueting-hall was converted into a chapel by George I. On 
the day of the execution, Charles I. was brought (about ten 
o'clock in the morning) from the palace of St. James across 
St. James's Park, and was conducted over the archway, which 
has been above described : he then spent nearly three hours in 
worship, probably in a small chapel which then lay adjacent to 
the archway to the south-east of the present Chapel Royal-; and 
after his devotions, was conducted through the interior of the 
present chapel to the scaffold. It is doubtful whether he passed 
through one of its windows on to the scaffold, or was led com- 
pletely through it to a portion (now destroyed) of the palace 
which then stood a little to the north of the present chapel, and 
thence led to the scaffold ; but that the position of the scaffold was 
in front of the present building there can be no doubt. 



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